Israeli settlers clash with police

AMONA OUTPOST, West Bank — Thousands of Israeli youths resisting the bulldozing of nine illegal buildings in this embryonic hilltop settlement clashed with security officers yesterday, lifting the struggle between Jewish settlers and the Israeli government to a new level of violence.

In contrast to the relatively orderly withdrawal from Gaza Strip settlements in September, settlers hurled stones from barricaded rooftops and mounted Israeli police struck at demonstrators with wooden batons.

More than 200 people were injured, including police, soldiers and two Israeli lawmakers sympathetic to the settlers.

The showdown was seen as a test of acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s willingness to confront Jewish settlers and as a possible prelude to the dismantling of dozens of other unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank.

Settlers said the police action was timed to enhance Mr. Olmert’s image in advance of Israeli parliamentary elections late next month.

“This is the election campaign of Ehud Olmert,” said Aryeh Eldad, a lawmaker from the far-right National Union party.

“The message is that the government of Israel can use whatever force, whatever brutality necessary to show that Ehud Olmert is as strong as Ariel Sharon. Olmert isn’t a military hero, so he has to copy something else from Sharon’s resume,” he said.

About 6,000 Israeli soldiers and policemen took part in the evacuation, which by late in the afternoon had left the one-floor stone dwellings bulldozed into a mound of rubble and twisted rods.

Israel’s Supreme Court last year gave the government until the end of January to destroy the uninhabited buildings, constructed at the edge of an outpost built on Palestinian land where at least 20 families live in mobile homes that were unaffected by the demolition.

The police said demonstrators hurled stones, nails, eggs and paint. Settlers countered that they were kicked and punched randomly.

“This has been a difficult day — a day of extremist violence and lawbreaking,” said Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. “This can’t occur in a law-abiding country. We won’t let a pack of criminals and rioters set our agenda.”

The clash came just a week after the landslide victory of Hamas in Palestinian parliamentary elections, which has exposed Mr. Olmert’s caretaker government to new criticism from the right wing.

Under the U.S.-sponsored “road map” for peace, Israel committed itself to dismantle dozens of unauthorized outposts set up in the past five years. An Israeli government report last year said 105 embryonic settlements were erected over the past decade with the assistance of government ministries but without a stamp of approval from the Cabinet.

But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, now incapacitated by a stroke, postponed confronting the settlers over the outposts so he could focus on the Gaza withdrawal. This month, however, the government had no choice but to comply with a court ruling to clear the Amona buildings, as well as Jewish squatters from the Arab open-air marketplace in the center of Hebron, which was completed without any resistance this week.

“If someone thinks it will lower the violence, this will only exacerbate it,” said Pinchas Wallerstein, a settler leader who said he was shoved by police. “The idea here is to humiliate people.”

Teenagers and twentysomething settlers, many of whom have yet to recover from the trauma of the Gaza evacuation, flooded the outpost in recent days, skirting roadblocks on main roadways through the West Bank. Early yesterday, the Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch petition to freeze the demolition.

That was the green light for the police to move in. Demonstrators on rooftops set up razor wire and set tires ablaze, while shouting insults at soldiers. Backed by water cannons, policemen hoisted by bulldozers ultimately reached the rooftops.

“It’s bizarre what is going on here,” said Avraham Yedidya, 15, his lip cut open and oozing blood. “Soldiers who enlisted to protect us are now beating us.”