Outpost built to honor terror victim demolished

Settler council head Mesika calls demolition of West Bank outpost built in honor of Evyatar Borovsky, "a cowardly act."

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Evyatar outpost 370 (photo credit: Tovah Lazaroff)
Evyatar outpost 370
(photo credit: Tovah Lazaroff)
Security forces early Friday morning demolished the new outpost built Wednesday in memory of terror victim Evyatar Borovsky, 31, who was stabbed to death the day before by a Palestinian at the Tapuah Junction.
The outpost was built by the Samaria Regional Council and council head Gershon Mesika had constructed a tent to house his office at the site.
Mesika called the demolition "a cowardly act," and placed blame on IDF Central Command chief Maj.-Gen. Nitzan Alon.
Mesika told Channel 2 that the Samaria Regional Council had told authorities that the outpost was put up temporarily in protest and they had planned to take it down following the seven day period of mourning for Borovsky.
Mesika accused Maj.-Gen. Alon of not knowing "how to protect Jews. He carried out a military commando raid on a protest tent that was built in memory of a Jew who was murdered just because he was Jewish."
Channel 2 quoted Mesika as saying that "Alon is the founding father of removing security checkpoints and cooperating with Palestinian terrorists who murder civilians, women and children. This is a disgrace, the blood is still dripping."
Upon setting up the outpost on Wednesday, Mesika called on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to authorize the site as a legal settlement, as the appropriate response to terrorism in Judea and Samaria.
He added that the property’s status was that of survey land, and that it did not belong to Palestinian landowners. As such, he said, it could be reclassified as state land.
Borovsky, a father of five from the Yitzhar settlement, was stabbed to death in a terror attack at the Tapuah Junction in Samaria on Tuesday morning, in the first lethal terror attack in the West Bank since 2011.
Following the murder, settlers rioted and attacked both Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the West Bank.
Tovah Lazaroff and Ben Hartman contributed to this report.