JERUSALEM, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of Jewish settlers, including a lawmaker, re-occupied the illegal outpost of Evyatar in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, amid escalating tension between Israelis and the Palestinians.
The settlers, including families with children, arrived at the hilltop outpost located in the lands of the Palestinian town of Beita to the south of Nablus in the early hours of Wednesday. In a statement, they declared that they had regained control over the site, which had previously been evacuated by Israeli security forces.
"We returned to Evyatar, this time for good, " tweeted Zvi Sukkot, a settler and lawmaker with Religious Zionism, an ultranationalist party and a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right coalition government.
Nachala, a pro-settlement movement, stated in a press release that the outpost was re-occupied "in response to" a fatal shooting attack on Tuesday afternoon. In the attack, two Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis and injured four others before a civilian passerby and soldiers shot and killed them.
Evyatar was first established in 2013 but was soon evacuated and demolished by the Israeli military. Since then, the outpost has been rebuilt and subsequently evacuated several times by Israeli security forces.
The outpost is considered illegal under international law, which deems all Israeli settlements illegal since they have been constructed on lands where Palestinians aspire to establish their future state and were captured by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war.
Netanyahu and Cabinet ministers in the hard-right Israeli government, who were sworn in late December, have pledged to retroactively legalize Evyatar and other outposts. However, this action has not been formally implemented thus far. ■
