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| By Israel Insider staff August 7, 2007 |
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Roughly 3,000 IDF soldiers were deployed today to evacuate two Jewish families and hundreds activists from three apartments in the Hebron marketplace. 12 soldiers who refused to participate were faced with military incarceration.
Police reports said that 11 officers and 4 activists were wounded. Hebron Jewish community leaders said, however, that 26 activists were injured.
The activists barricaded themselves in three apartments, having welded the doors shut, and surrounded the marketpace with barbed wire, oil drums, and burning tires. Scores of teenagers, some masked, threw eggs, rocks and light bulbs at security forces from the roof. They stopped only when a prominent community leader called on them to cease throwing stones.
"Today we are preparing for a struggle," said Gershon Bar-Kochba, one of the settlers living in the marketplace, prior to the evacuation. "We won't leave the marketplace voluntarily. We've already been here. The struggle will be resolute, but non-violent. It will be the police forces, not the residents, who determine the level of violence. We do not plan to use violence," the Jerusalem Post reported.
The 12 refuseniks, supported by several prominent rabbis, have caused an uproar among leftist and centrist politicians.
"Our army is the only army we have and the soldiers receive their orders from their commanders and no one else, no matter how important or honorable he might be," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday. "There is no place among us for insubordination."
MK Zahava Gal-On of Meretz said that rabbis who urged soldiers to refuse the IDF orders must stand trial. "These Rabbis are part of a rebellious leadership revolting against government and Knesset legislation," referring to the rabbis that urged the boys not to participate in the evacuation.
"There can be no justification for insubordination, as it causes harm to the IDF and the power of the state of Israel," the National Religious Party Chairman Zevulun Orlev said.
"Just the same, the government should be condemned for the foolish decision to recruit the IDF for policing tasks aimed at evacuating Jewish families whose property was stolen during the events of 1929 and who have the right to live in Hebron,"Orlev added.
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