Soldiers broke through the crumbling walls of an abandoned Turkish railroad station on the West Bank today to forcibly evacuate about 60 illegal settlers of the Gush Emunim movement who were trying to establish a settlement near Sebastia in the Samaria region in defiance of government orders.
Members of the group had barricaded themselves on the second floor of the old depot and sealed its windows with steel plates. But the soldiers, using picks and crowbars, tunneled through the walls and carried the squatters, one-by-one, to buses that returned them to Jerusalem.
Today’s attempt by the would-be settlers to establish themselves in the West Bank was the second since Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger began his current peace efforts in the Middle East. Two weeks ago, a Gush Emunim group was forcibly evacuated from a site at Maale Adumim on the Jerusalem-Jericho road.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
