Israel overnight broke up the Palestinian protest camp set up on a controversial piece of West Bank land between East Jerusalem and the Jewish settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Thursday the site “was cleared in accordance with a court decision order. At the moment the area is completely empty.” Israel’s Supreme Court earlier Wednesday accepted the Israeli state’s position that the camp would be “magnet for disturbances of public order” and cancelled a temporary injunction forbidding the outpost’s removal.
However, it added that it would continue to discuss the petition against removing the tents, since their removal was not an “irreversible step.” More than 100 Palestinians and foreign activists who had occupied the camp, which they called Bab al-Shams and said would become a new Palestinian village, had already been evicted from the site Sunday.
But the Israeli authorities could not touch the tents themselves until the court decision.
The camp was set up on Friday, in the so-called E-1 area, just east of Jerusalem, where Israel has announced controversial building plans despite massive international opposition.
Palestinians say construction plan, if implemented, would choke off East Jerusalem, which they want as their capital, and harm the contiguity of their future state.
Scuffles broke out on the site Tuesday, as around 60 activists tried to return to the site, only to be rebuffed by Israeli police and border police.
