Police, IDF complete evacuation of illegal outpost of Yad Yair

West Bank settlers torched fields belonging to Palestinian villagers and punctured the tires of IDF vehicles on Thursday, in response to the forced evacuation of the illegal outpost of Yad Yair by Police and Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

Police said two Israelis were arrested. Witnesses from the village of Madameh said about 200 trees were set on fire. The village is in the northern West Bank near the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar.

Israel Radio has reported that the army is currently trying to block the entry of settlers to the nearby West Bank city of Ramallah.

On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces backed off of a planned evacuation of the illegal West Bank outpost, west of the settlement of Binyamin after a throng of settlers who learned of the plan gathered at the site before dawn on Wednesday.

Senior IDF officials have held contacts with settler leaders in an effort to coordinate an agreed upon relocation of the outpost closer to the settlement of Dolev.

Hundreds of settlers from nearby settlements, including Dolev, Talmon, Nahliel, Niryah, and Harsha, gathered late Tuesday night at the outpost after residents received information that the army and the police were about to launch an evacuation. Settlers say the security forces had deployed a significant number of personnel as well as equipment used for evacuation.

A settler leader from Dolev, Yanir Aldubi, who also serves as the head of the Binyamin settlements secretariat, told Haaretz shortly after arriving on the scene that he did not understand why large forces were concentrated in preparation for evacuation of Yad Yair (which was named after Yair Mendelson, a settler from Dolev who was killed by Palestinians during the first intifada) given that the settlers and the security forces reached an agreement on its relocation.