Israeli Settlers Run Riot After Hebron Eviction

The Age

Saturday December 6, 2008

Jason Koutsoukis, Jerusalem, With New York Times

THE stand-off between 200 right-wing settlers and the Israeli armed forces has ended with their swift eviction from the so-called House of Contention in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Hebron.

About 600 Israel Defence Forces troops and police officers moved in on Thursday 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 itself 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 hordes of settlers who ran riot following their removal from the building.

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

Groups of right-wing protesters also manned intersections along major highways across Israel, holding signs declaring that the whole "Land of Israel" belongs to the Jews, and demanding that all Arabs be expelled.

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 settler families who have been living in the house claim the building was legally purchased from the Palestinian who built it.

The builder claims he was tricked by the buyers. He 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 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.

Brigadier-General Noam Tibon, head of the IDF's West Bank division, declared all of the southern West Bank a closed military zone in order to prevent Israelis who are not residents of Hebron from massing around the house.

As the sun set, the area around the building looked like a war zone. Evacuees were still being dragged about, with four police officers per person; rocks were strewn on the roadways; plumes of black smoke were rising from the olive groves; and hundreds of helmeted troops in riot gear were confronting a furious crowd.

The men in the crowd wore beards and side curls, while the women had the long skirts and covered heads typical of the religious Zionist Jewish population in and around Hebron, who number several thousand and live at loggerheads with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the town.

As Palestinians watched from rooftops and windows, some settlers shouted at the troops, calling them Nazis.

A few had sewn yellow stars on their shirts, as Jews were obliged to do under Hitler.