Fears Of More Violence Over Hebron Eviction

The Age

Saturday December 6, 2008

Jason Koutsoukis, Jerusalem, with New York Times, AFP

SECURITY forces are bracing for more violence after Israeli hardliners went on the rampage against Palestinians in retaliation for the eviction of settlers from a house in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron.

Authorities were also worried about a Palestinian backlash amid simmering anger over the perceived failure of Israel's security forces to protect them from the rampaging mob in Hebron.

Security was beefed up around Jerusalem's mosque compound before Friday prayers, and access was restricted to Muslims holding Israeli identity cards and aged over 45 in the case of men, with no age restrictions for women.

A videotape distributed by Israel's B'Tselem human rights group shows a settler shooting two Palestinians and a guard from the nearby Kiryat Arba settlement firing into the air as relatives of the victims overpowered the gunman.

B'Tselem said it delivered the video to Hebron police, demanding that the assailant be immediately brought to justice.

The stand-off between the right-wing settlers and the Israeli armed forces ended on Thursday with their eviction from the so-called House of Contention.

About 600 Israel Defence Forces troops and police officers moved in to remove 10 families living in the building and the large group of supporters who had flocked to the house to help prevent the operation.

The eviction took less than 30 minutes and resulted in few injuries, but it started a wave of violent attacks by settlers against Palestinians across the West Bank.

Olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers in Hebron were torched by ousted settlers.

Three Palestinians in the town were injured when settlers opened fire, while in other parts of the West Bank, settlers hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles, vandalised property and sprayed anti-Muslim graffiti on mosque walls.

The house in Hebron is a four-storey building on the road to the Cave of the Patriarchs, where the prophet Abraham is said to have been buried, and which is sacred to Jews and Muslims.

The presence of a few hundred Jewish settlers in Hebron's centre, and a further 6500 in nearby Kiryat Arba, has been a source of tension in the Palestinian city of 170,000 long before 100 or so Israelis moved into the house in March last year. The international community considers Jewish settlements in the West Bank to be illegal, and the Palestinians say they are the biggest obstacle to Middle East peace talks.

The settler families who have been living in the house say the building was legally purchased from the Palestinian who built it. The builder says he did not realise they were Jews and that the sale never went through.

Last month, the Israeli High Court ordered the house's evacuation until a lower court rules on ownership.

Because of its location in the West Bank, which would become part of a Palestinian state under a plan being pushed by outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the move to evacuate the house was seen as a precursor of other moves by Israel to withdraw completely from the West Bank and remove Jewish settlements.

The southern West Bank was declared a closed military zone. -- With NEW YORK TIMES, AFP