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| By Israel Insider staff August 16, 2007 |
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Just a week after the army forcibly removed hundreds of Jewish protestors from the Hebron marketplace, a group of Knesset members on Wednesday called on the government to allow Jews to return.
The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Sub-committee on the West Bank agreed to request the cabinet to "perform a thorough inspection aimed at regulating Jewish presence in the market, through dialogue and according to law," the Jerusalem Post reported.
"We asked the government to give this building back to the [Hebron Jewish] community," MK Otniel Schneller of Kadima said, who heads the committee.
Spokesmen for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have yet to comment on the matter.
The proposal will likely face much resistance on the left. MK Ran Cohen of Meretz, who is a member of the sub-committee, said he opposed the return of Jews to the marketplace.
"The decision to allow Jews into the marketplace is not a historical or legal one, but rather a matter of the government's diplomatic policy, which should be decided at that level," Cohen said.
The Hebron Jewish community has maintained that both legally and historically they are entitled to live in the marketplace, which is situated near one of the main entrance ways to the Jewish Avraham Avinu neighborhood.
Jews had owned and operated the marketplace prior to the 1929 Hebron massacre that destroyed the Jewish community in the city.
Following the War of Independence in 1948, Jordan was in control of the West Bank and gave the marketplace area to the Custodian of Abandoned Properties, which then leased it to the Hebron Municipality. The municipality rented the shops to local Palestinians, who operated stalls there until 1994, when Israel evicted them.
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