The Amona evacuees’ headquarters on Wednesday established a hunger strike tent outside the prime minister downtown Jerusalem, which they say would remain in place until a new community is made available to them as promised.
“Destruction follows destruction. Promises are not kept and the national government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett has lost the justification for its existence,” the group said in a statement.
“It is inconceivable that exactly one month after the erasure of the community of Amona, when the heart still boils, refusing to be comforted after a 20-year enterprise had been cut from the world, when the families of Amona evacuees continue to live in substandard conditions for a month in a boarding school, eight people, parents and youths in one room – while only a few hundred yards away the government demolishes yet another group of stone homes and evicts their residents. Is this the government for which we have voted?”
Pointing their finger at the chairman of the coalition party most closely associated with the settlement enterprise, the Amona group’s statement continued: “How can you, Naftali Bennett, who committed to establishing a new settlement to replace the one that was destroyed can go to sleep in your home in Ra’anana with a quiet heart over the destruction and the human horror and the destruction of values?”
Addressing the prime minister again, the group asks, “How can you, Benjamin Netanyahu, who signed and voiced your commitment to approve a new settlement for the people of Amona, how can you continue to roam the world’s salons when here at home the settlements, neighborhoods and homes of pioneers, citizens who voted for you, are being erased and their world collapsed?”
The group has vowed to maintain its hunger strike until a new settlement is built for them. Netanyahu, who promised to provide alternative homes to the refugees from Amona has also recently committed to a virtual settlement expansion freeze, in deference to President Trump’s demand – so he, Netanyahu, claims.