Israeli security forces prepared to face off against settler activists planning to retake an evacuated West Bank settlement.
Hundreds of activists arrived in Homesh early Monday, predicting that thousands more would come. Police and army forces will try to prevent the group from rebuilding Homesh, which was evacuated in August 2005 as part of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the northern West Bank.
The march is taking place in defiance of the mainstream settler leadership. Organizers, many of them upset with the settler leadership’s handling of the withdrawal, vowed to rebuild Homesh and said it was the start of a new campaign against future government initiatives to remove settlers.
The Israeli army canceled a ban prohibiting Israelis from driving Palestinians in their cars in the West Bank. The order, which never took effect, was criticized as racist by Israeli civil rights groups who petitioned the High Court of Justice against it. “Such was the situation in South Africa during apartheid, and such it was in the American South until the 1960s. There are some things one does not do,” the groups argued to the court. Officials said they had initiated the ban as a security measure to prevent Israelis from driving illegal workers or potential suicide bombers into Israel. In the past, Israeli Arabs have been charged with driving in Palestinian terrorists who later carried out attacks inside Israel.
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