Israel orders Palestinians to quit camp

The Israeli occupation administration gave Palestinian activists an ultimatum on Saturday to quit a protest camp in part of the West Bank where Israel has vowed to build new settler homes, an organiser said. But hours after the deadline passed, there was no sign of any Israeli move to evict the protesters and even more joined them as Palestinian politicians visited in a show of support. More than 200 activists erected the 20-tent “outpost” on Friday in the sensitive West Bank corridor east of Jerusalem where Palestinians say Israeli settlement construction would destroy the prospects of territorial contiguity for their promised state. They modelled their action on the wildcat outposts set up by Jewish settler activists on Palestinian land in a bid to force the government’s hand into authorising settlement activity. “Members of the Israeli Civil (military) Administration told us this morning that we have one hour to evacuate the site,” one of the organisers, Abir Copty, said. “We have no intention of leaving of our own accord,” she said, adding that the Israeli authorities had declared the area a “closed military zone” and demanded that the activists leave, but had made no demand for the tents to be taken down. The Israeli military administration had issued previous expulsion orders against the activists but late on Friday they successfully petitioned the Israeli supreme court for the orders to be frozen. Late on Saturday morning, Israeli security forces were deployed near the camp and a police helicopter hovered overhead. But more than 50 more activists managed to reach the camp from the West Bank city of Ramallah to join the activists and others were trying to do so from the city of Hebron, organisers said on Twitter. The protest outpost, dubbed Bab Al Shams, was welcomed on Friday by a senior Palestinian official who described it as a “highly creative and legitimate non-violent” way of protecting Palestinian land from Israeli settlement activity. Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers shot dead one Palestinian and wounded another in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday, a spokesman for the territory’s emergency services said. The two men were hit by live fire east of Jabaliya and near the Israeli border, Ashraf Al Qudra said. The military said only that one Palestinian was hit in the leg after trying to damage the barrier separating Gaza from Israel when dozens of people approached and ignored orders from troops to back away, who then opened fire.