Large army and police forces and hundreds of youth faced off in Samaria over an attempt to destroy meter-high supports on which caravans - mobile homes without wheels - are placed.  After eight hours, the police finally withdrew.

"We were willing to struggle over a few miserable concrete pillars," stated the Homesh First settlement organization; "over entire communities in Judea and Samaria, there will be a war."

At the Scene of the Stand-Off
"A shame and a disgrace for the Nation of Israel," said Gershon Mesika, the mayor of the Samaria Regional Council from the site, in the community of Har Brachah. "You look down over the valley here and see thousands of illegal Arab homes - and yet the police come to this site en masse in order to destroy a few little supports.  It's hard to believe."

The supports for the caravans were placed there five years ago, and no caravans have been placed upon them.  "Despite this," Mesika suggested, "the government has decided that it has to show the Americans, and visiting Condoleeza Rice, that it is doing something against the settlements.  But the fact that hundreds of youths are here - and more are coming up by foot from all around, since the army closed the roads - will show them that our long-time promises to the Land of Israel, take precedence over the government's promises to the Americans."

Nation Must Wake Up
Mesika said that the nation must "wake up" to oppose these "Oslo leaders who have brought upon us problem after problem."  He said that just like in the times of the Maccabees, "when one specific event [the refusal by Mattathias and his sons to the Syrian-Greek demand for idol-worship in the town of Modiin] kicked off an entire national uprising, perhaps this will be the incident that will awaken the nation today."

Hollow Rule of Law
Rabbi Yaakov Idels, a resident of Brachah, told Arutz-7 that today's clash shows the hollowness of Israel's rule of law. "It's not that this property belongs to Arabs or something like that.  This area has the same status of the rest of our community, and of almost all the towns in Yesha when they began, and even of some towns in the rest of Israel - namely, that the plans have simply not yet been formally approved.  This is the same way that much of Israel was built!"

The neighborhood in question is also in between two other built-up neighborhoods in the town of Brachah, Idels noted.

"When the law is selectively enforced," Rabbi Idels said, "as in this case, it voids the rule of law of genuine legitimacy.  The purpose of zoning laws is to prevent totally chaotic construction, which in the end would harm the public interest.  For instance, not far from here in the Arab village of Hawara, they built illegally all along the main road, and now the residents suffer.  But in our case, as in many cases in Israel throughout the years, the towns plan it out, and the Housing Ministry subsidizes and is in on the planning, and things are done in an organized manner.  To destroy something like this is simply an abuse of the law for political means."

In other news regarding the government's policy of opposition to the Yesha settlement enterprise:
The government's Voice of Israel Radio reported today that five unauthorized settlement outpost neighborhoods are to be destroyed by the government in the coming days. 

In addition, the army's plans to destroy the last remaining tent on a hilltop outside Tapuach were rendered irrelevant when arsonists destroyed it instead.  Around 3 AM Monday morning, it is suspected that Arabs threw gas firebombs into the tent, setting it afire.  The tent had previously housed a Torah study-hall, dormitory and dining hall for a unique yeshiva in which the students also trained dogs for security purposes.  The students emptied the tent of its contents over the past few days in preparation for the upcoming eviction.