SEVEN Israeli settler extremists were arrested and 16 police injured yesterday in clashes over the demolition of an illegal West Bank outpost.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said some 3,000 police officers were operating “carefully and slowly” to evacuate the Amona settlement ahead of its court-ordered demolition — in stark contrast to their heavy-handed approach to knocking down Palestinian homes.

Police spokeswoman Luba al-Samri said officers had detained several “suspects” for interrogation after incidents of “rioters attacking and throwing bottles and irritating materials.”

Mr Rosenfeld later confirmed that 16 police officers had been slightly injured by stones and “liquids” and that seven people had been arrested for “disturbances.” About 200 people were “removed from the area,” he said.

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that Amona had been built on private Palestinian land and must be demolished. It set February 8 as the final date for its destruction.

About 50 families totalling 250 residents lived on the site, which was seized by settlers in the 1990s, but Mr Rosenfeld said some 1,500 militants who had travelled there confronted officers yesterday.

“This is a dark day for us, for zionism, for the state and for the great vision of the Jewish people returning to its homeland,” Avichay Buaron, a spokesman for Amona, told Channel 2 TV.

Yesh Din, the Israeli legal rights group that represented the Palestinian landowners in court, welcomed the evacuation. In a Facebook post, it said the landowners are “waiting to return.”

“Our feeling is indescribable,” said Abdel-Rahman Saleh, the mayor of the nearby Palestinian town of Silwad, who helped the landowners to build their case. “We struggled for 20 years to get our land back.”

In the run-up to the eviction, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration announced the approval of 3,000 more homes on stolen Palestinian land on Tuesday night, in an apparent sop to hardline zionist parties in the governing coalition.

Earlier this month, Tel Aviv launched an unprecedented campaign of demolitions of homes belonging to Palestinian citizens of Israel, sparking a general strike and resignations of councillors in protest.

Authorities said the homes had been built without planning permission, but local leaders said that authorisation had been blocked and the demolitions were in revenge for the Amona ruling.

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