The Supreme Court has ordered defense authorities to cease sealing off houses and business establishments in the Dahayshe refugee camp and removing Palestinian residents living near the Jerusalem-Hebron highway.
The court issued its temporary injunction at the request of local residents after press reports that the Israeli authorities planned to level part of the camp bordering the highway to prevent the stoning of Israeli vehicles.
The residents said the entrances to the camp had been blocked off in recent days. Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, coordinator of activities on the West Bank, has said in a recent interview that unrest in the refugee camps increased the need to rehabilitate them.
Meanwhile, Defense Minister Moshe Arens defended the way Israel deals with unrest on the West Bank. He said the Israeli forces deserved “good marks” for the way they preserved law and order.
Arens spoke in reply to four agenda motions in the Knesset on the recent violence in the territory. He said the incident a week ago when two Arab youths from a Tulkarem refugee camp were fatally shot by Israeli border police was a lesson that people who throw stones cannot know what the consequences will be.
Preserving law and order is “difficult, unpleasant and often dangerous,” he said, adding that Israel could give itself good marks for the job it was doing.
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