The Minister of Defense evacuated an outpost established a few hours earlier in the northern West Bank. Far-right parties are protesting, but Benyamin Netanyahu, the head of government, comes to the defense of his defense minister.
With our correspondent in Jerusalem, Michael Paul
It all happened very quickly. Five families and a dozen young settlers had set up, during the night of Thursday to Friday, January 20, an outpost in the north of the West Bank.
They named this mini-settlement “Or Chaim”, the light of life, in memory of Rabbi Chaim Drukman, one of the spiritual leaders of the settlers in the West Bank, who died last month at age 90.
It is his grandson who was also at the origin of this initiative. But things did not drag out: a few hours later, soldiers dismantled the buildings and forcibly evicted their occupants.
Protests from the right wing of the government, which demanded an immediate halt to the evacuation of Or Haïm, contrary to the coalition agreements.
Defense Minister Yoav Galant, however, ignored these remonstrances, and won the support of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The government only supports settlements when they are established legally and in a coordinated manner, he said.
This clash within the coalition, the first of its kind, will be at the center of the Council of Ministers on Sunday morning.
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