BICOM

Security forces have begun to evacuate hundreds of demonstrators who are gathering in the West Bank settlement of Ofra to protest against the implementation of a court order to evacuate and demolish nine houses.

The residents do not appear to be seeking a confrontation and there are reports they have already left their homes. They issued a statement yesterday saying, “We will not use crowbars and we will not barricade ourselves.”

Israel police have arrested a number of settler activists in the last week to prevent them from travelling to Ofra and disrupting the evacuation. Hundreds of young people made their way to Ofra last night and this morning barricaded themselves in the buildings due to be demolished.

Israel’s High Court yesterday rejected a petition by the residents to seal, rather than destroy their homes.  The residents hoped that by keeping the structures in place, they would eventually be able to apply the new Regulation Law, which retroactively gives residents the right to live in homes built illegally on private Palestinian land if the homes were built unknowingly on private land or with government help.

The High Court ruled that the Regulation Law cannot apply to land and houses where the court has already made a decision, such as the Ofra buildings. The case was first brought to court in 2008 by the advocacy group Yesh Din, on behalf of the Palestinian landowner. In 2015, the courts issued a demolition order against the nine homes, with the deadline delayed several times until ruling a final evacuation date of 5 March.