Border Police officers waiting Sunday for the arrival of right-wing protesters marching to the former West Bank settlement of Homesh. (Eyal Warshavsky / BauBau)
Police remove right-wing activists from former West Bank settlement of Homesh
By Nadav Shragai and Yuval Azoulay, Haaretz Correspondents
Border Police forces Monday forcibly evacuated hundreds of right-wing activists who had infiltrated the former West Bank settlement of Homesh overnight.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said some 350 people had entered the area of the former settlement, 12 of whom were arrested and held for questioning. He said no one had been injured in the process.
The activists, barred by the police from marching to Homesh on Sunday, snuck into the site early Monday morning and began building a synagogue.
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The activists also erected a wooden tower on a hill north of the settlement to mark two years since Israel evacuated the site during the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Border Police officers demolished the structure that the activists had erected overnight.
Right-wing activists have held four previous marches to the ruins of Homesh, one of four settlements in the northern West Bank that were evacuated during the 2005 disengagement.
According to protesters, the police treated the women activists brutally during the evacuation. Activists also complained that a number of police officers had failed to wear identification, and some said that their cameras had been confiscated and the memory cards inside destroyed.
On Sunday evening, activists apparently hid in wooded areas and waited for the authorities to leave.
They then entered the site, each carrying a brick, and began rebuilding the synagogue that had been demolished during the disengagement.
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