Israël west bank
Lapid confident West Bank outpost Evyatar to be razed
FM says illegality of settlement, which has sparked deadly clashes between the army and local Palestinians, is ‘not a question of right or left’.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that an illegal West Bank outpost will be razed in accordance with army orders and that the issue will not be a source of division within the fragile coalition government.
In his first public remarks about the Evyatar outpost since taking office, Lapid, who is also alternate prime minister, told Zman Israel, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew sister site, that the fate of the community was not in doubt.
“The outpost will be evacuated,” he said Monday. “It is illegal. It is not at all a question of right or left. It is an order from the army and the civil administration.”
Lapid’s remarks came the day after the army rejected an appeal from settlers against razing the outpost.
The issue of the outpost has been used by opposition lawmakers to attack the right-wing, pro-settlement Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, accusing him of being under the thumb of his centrist and left-wing coalition partners.
“Bennett will explain that there is no choice and that there are Civil Administration and army orders,” an MK from the far-right Religious Zionism party told Zman, though he noted that previous prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also evacuated outposts.
“He [Bennett] will choose to evacuate it quickly and be done with it,” the lawmaker said. “He makes out that the army is already seriously prepared for the evacuation.”
Settlers at the Evyatar outpost had hoped to stop the planned evacuation, but the military denied their request on Sunday.
TANIKO Madagascar 