Four months after the eviction of the Amona settlement in Samaria, work has begun on the construction of an alternative home for the evacuees, Walla reported Tuesday. 102 housing units will be built in the new settlement, named Amichai, in the Shvut Rachel area of the Benjamin region.
About two weeks ago, the construction plan was approved by the Settlement Subcommittee of the Supreme Planning Council. The committee decided, at the request of the evacuees of Amona, that once the plan was approved by the political echelon, even if the planning and approval procedures were not yet complete, the earthworks could begin. And so, as soon as the plan had indeed been approved recently, the earthworks in the area began Tuesday morning.
Understandably, the residents of Amona responded with caution to news, with a statement that said, “We welcome the beginning of the works and pray for their progress without interruptions. The entire public expects the Prime Minister not to allow any hostile element, neither left-wing elements, nor legal nor civil service, to stop the work. We mustn’t allow for this success – the establishment of a new settlement in Judea and Samaria – to turn into failure and a farce.”
“The public has had enough disappointments,” the apparently quite mistrustful evacuated residents stressed, adding that “the responsibility rests on the shoulders of the government and its leader. The residents of Amona have been living without a home for five months now, so the work that began today is a hope for the future.”
“A settlement that has been destroyed must be rebuilt, and promises must be kept,” the group concluded.
In early February, the 42 families were evicted from their homes and from their community of several decades, after the Prime Minister had assured them that he would build them new homes nearby. They were transported to mobile homes in a nearby community and most of them have been waiting ever since. Their feared was that Netanyahu would treat them they way his predecessors have treated the thousands of Jews expelled from Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, many of whom were dumped into a life of homelessness and poverty.