Government forces arrived Monday evening at the outpost of Oz Tzion, intent on demolishing buildings in the budding community.

The Samaria (Shomron) Jewish outpost is located in the Binyamin region, near the town of Beit El, and has been raided before.
Three young women staying at the outpost were arrested by Border Police last week on suspicion of violating a closed military zone order. They were released after being interrogated.

The arrests came in the wake of a raid at the outpost which resulted in police officers chasing two underage girls and one adult woman who were staying at the site.

An account of the police harassment of the girls and that of a yeshiva student at the police precinct is posted on the Honenu legal aid organization website.

Border Police officers and Yassam special operations personnel have carried out demolitions in the past. In one instance they forced their way into girls’ homes and forcibly rounded them up into one building so bulldozers could destroy the other homes.

But each time the outpost has been destroyed, determined residents have returned to rebuild.

Civil Administration and police officers also  demolished five buildings at the site, located near Givat Assaf, this past January and razed three more structures at the outpost again in February.

There have been many tourists who have come to express their support of the young pioneers. Among them was a group of Christians who came in solidarity just after a raid at dawn last November.

Fifteen structures were destroyed during that operation, and the tourists were threatened with arrest by police during the visit that came hours later.

Unafraid, the 34 Canadians and eight Americans later wrote to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, expressing their disgust, and asking why government troops threatened them, and not the “busloads of foreigners [who]come to this region, all in support of the Arabs against the settlers.

“Why would you so easily let these confessed enemies of Israel wander around with immunity, and arrest us who support you?” they asked in their letter.”