Eighteen families are scheduled to move out of their apartments in the Ulpana
outpost on the outskirts of the West Bank Beit El settlement on
Thursday.
They will move into modular homes in the Beit El settlement.
Already on Tuesday, 15 families relocated peacefully to modular homes at that
site with the help of workers from the Defense Ministry.
The High Court
of Justice had ordered the state to evacuate five out of the 14 apartment
buildings in the Ulpana outpost because they were built without permits on land
classified by the state as belonging to private Palestinians.
The state
plans to relocate the buildings, rather than destroy them, so that the families
can keep their homes, in their new location. The process will take a year.
Physically taking apart the homes to allow them to be pieced back together will
take three months.
The state has asked the High Court of Justice to allow
them that time. The court had wanted the site cleared by July 1.
Ulpana
residents had initially threatened to resist the evacuation, but opted instead
to leave their homes peacefully after reaching an agreement with the Prime
Minister’s Office, which included a promise to build 300 new homes in Beit
El.
The Prime Minister’s Office also promised that it would no longer
support the removal of Jewish homes in the West Bank in state responses to High
Court of Justice petitions.
Right-wing activists who opposed the deal,
however, protested Wednesday in the Beit El settlement outside the home of its
Rabbi Zalman Melamed.
Violence broke out between the group and residents
of the outpost, during which Yoel Tzur, one of the founders of Ulpana, was
lightly injured.
Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.