3,000 police officers remove 1,700 activists, one by one.
By ANNA AHRONHEIMYOUNG PROTESTERS sit in a caravan singing and resting as they wait to be evacuated by police officers from the illegal outpost in Amona.(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
“I could be your younger sister!” teenaged activists shouted at female police officers, who had come to remove them from the caravan in which they barricaded themselves, in the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona on Wednesday.Just moments earlier, the girls had been singing “Hatikva,” the national anthem, as more than two dozen officers stationed outside began tearing down flimsy chairs and metal piled up at the entrance.At least 30 female and male teenagers were sitting armin- arm on the floor of the caravan when police entered.Talia, 17, was one of the first to leave, in tears, in the arms of female police officers.Shortly thereafter, she told The Jerusalem Post she left because her eldest brother said he couldn’t imagine her “being dragged by the police by force.”“I think he is happy that I left this way, keeping my dignity and not leaving looking like an animal,” she said, adding between tears that she felt bad for the officers who, seeing her cry once she left the caravan, gave her tissues and water.“This could easily be my cousin,” she said. “The only reason he’s not here is because he is doing a course.”Officers had dragged out one of her friends a mere meter or two away and Talia rushed over to make sure he was okay.“I’m with you, I’m with you,” the officer told the teenage activist, and offered him water before bringing him to his feet and carrying him away.Talia is a resident of Ofra, the settlement right below Amona. During the 2006 Amona evacuation, she watched from the porch of her home as violence broke out.“My mother and brothers were injured,” Talia said, explaining that her mother was dragged by her hair and that her elder brother suffered broken ribs.“Now it’s my turn. I’m here because now I’m old enough to say that enough is enough.This is wrong.“I haven’t lost faith in the country, but in our leaders and our government. The government played the people of Amona.“The kids who are witnessing this evacuation, what are they supposed to think?” Hours earlier, Eli Greenberg, a resident of Amona for the past 13 years, said more than 100 people were in his home to support the families living there.“They came to shout that evacuating Amona is wrong.All of our supporters, in Israel, abroad and online know that,” Greenberg said, sitting on his neighbor’s couch.“Amona is on the front lines of fighting terror,” he stated.“How come in 2017, after [US President Donald] Trump assumed power and we see the two-state solution is dying, this is happening? People’s lives, 40 families and over 200 kids, their lives are being mutilated.“People are being kicked out in the middle of winter with nowhere to go.”“We know that Amona will stay here and in our hearts.It is a message of Jewish sovereignty in the West Bank,” Greenberg said.“Today my life will be changed. It’s like a birthday, but sad. We will be reborn.”