IDF and police forces were dispatched to the ruins of the town of Homesh in northern Samaria on Friday evening, at the start of the Sabbath, to remove Jewish youth who were squatting on the property. Homesh was one of four Jewish communities in northern Samaria that were forcibly evacuated in the Disengagement of 2005. It has been off limits to visitors ever since, although a constant flow of activists has been in and out of the remains of the town many times.
The Homesh First organization, dedicated to reversing the results of the Disengagement, called the use of soldiers for the purpose of evicting squatters "a mafia-style, patently illegal" act.
Rabbi Yehoshua Schmidt, the head of the Birkat HaTorah Hesder Yeshiva in Shavei Shomron, called the violation of the Sabbath in Homesh a "shame and an embarrassment. These were actions unbecoming senior officers in a Jewish army. Whoever was in charge of the mass Sabbath desecration should be removed from his position. There are no words to describe the disgrace and humiliation." Hesder yeshiva students serve in the army, primarily in combat units, during their years of Torah studies.