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Palestinian and Israeli activists built a mock "Palestinian outpost" in the West Bank to protest Israel's ongoing settlement expansion.
In an area between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim, demonstrators set up a small house, complete with a concrete foundation, and raised colourful Palestinian flags.
The new Palestinian "outpost" didn't last long, though. An hour after it was set up, an Israeli police truck dragged away the entire house and arrested around 10 demonstrators standing nearby.
The fake outpost was meant to draw attention to Israel's continued settlement activity, including the more than 100 settlement outposts that were set up in recent years.
Israel recently issued bids to build more than 300 new apartments in a controversial neighbourhood in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem, attracting rare US criticism.
Today, settlers plan to try to set up nine more outposts, but security forces have said they intend to stop them.
The Palestinians fear that continued settlement expansion will make it increasingly difficult to establish their state. Some 450,000 Israelis live on war-won land the Palestinians want for their state.
Settlers began setting up outposts more than a decade ago in an effort to break up Palestinian areas and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. The more than 100 outposts range from isolated trailers to permanent construction on a larger scale. Many are near existing, authorised settlements, in effect extending their reach.
The outposts were never authorised, but nevertheless received millions of dollars government funding and other support. Israel promised years ago to remove dozens of outposts, but has failed to take any action.
About 30 Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners participated in yesterday's protest. One man shovelled concrete around the small house to reinforce it. Others tried to work out how to fit a glass window into its ready-made gap.
"We are trying to make a new Palestinian suburb on land that is threatened with expropriation," said Abdullah Abu Rahme, a protester.
During the protest, Shmulik Shamir, an Israeli living in nearby Maaleh Adumim carried his country's blue-and-white flag began arguing with the protesters: "This is Israeli land. Go to Jordan."
Footage showed Shamir standing almost nose-to-nose with a Palestinian man, each angrily waving their respective national flags. "This is Israel!" Shamir shouted. "This is Palestine!" shouted the Palestinian protester.
The fate of Israeli settlements will be on the table when Israeli-Palestinian peace talks formally resume in Jerusalem next week. Israel annexed east Jerusalem and began building settlements in neighbouring areas of the West Bank after it captured the land in the 1967 Mideast war. The de facto expansion of Israel's borders is not internationally recognised and Palestinians want the eastern part of Jerusalem and all of the West Bank as their capital.
The announcement for the tender to build 307 apartments in the Har Homa neighbourhood came just days after both sides agreed to restart peace negotiations, immediately stoking accusations of bad faith.
"It's inconceivable that the peace process requires a halt to all construction in Jerusalem, in an area that is within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries," Zeev Boim, Israel's Housing Minister, told Israel Army Radio. "There's nothing to prevent us from building there, just as there is nothing to prevent us from building anywhere else."
In rare criticism of Israel, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on the sidelines of a Nato meeting that the tenders wouldn't "help to build confidence."
-AP
