A mock Nazi flag featuring a Star of David and swastikas was hung outside an Israeli outpost in the northern West Bank Tuesday morning.
Students attending the yeshiva on the outpost were surprised to find a red placard hoisted on a post by the side of the road, adorned with two white circles featuring swastikas on its obverse, and another two white circles featuring a third swastika and a Star of David emblazoned on its reverse.
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A red placard adorned with a Star of David and a swastika hoisted on a post by the side of a road leading to the northern West Bank outpost of Homesh
(Photo: Homesh Yeshiva)
One yeshiva student told Ynet that when he and his friends spotted the placard, which was hung mere 100 meters (300 feet) from the entrance to the outpost, they stopped the car and quickly took it down.
The road leads to what used to be the settlement of Homesh, which was evacuated by Israel in 2005 as part of its controversial unilateral disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank, also called Samaria according to Jewish tradition.
Jewish settlers have squatted the land several times since, just to get repeatedly evicted by the military despite the area being under full Israeli administrative control and a 2007 court ruling that Israelis were legally allowed on the plot.
Several right-wing lawmakers have visited the site since, expressing their support for the resettlement of Homesh.
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Right-wing lawmakers and settler leaders visit the former northern West Bank settlement of Homesh, May 16, 2019
(Photo: Roee Hadai)
Yeshiva dean Shmuel Wendy said that acts of harassment by local Palestinians have become more frequent since Israel's last war in the Gaza Strip in May, codenamed Operation Guardian of the Walls, which also saw widespread civil unrest among Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.
"Since Operation Guardian of the Walls, we are experiencing a lot of harassment here and it seems to be a deliberate trend," Wendy said.
"They are trying to harm Homesh Yeshiva because it is the last peg in northern Samaria, and the pin in the dam that prevents northern Samaria from becoming a terrorist enclave like Gaza."