 |
| |
 |
An injured Israeli policeman covered in paint, Hebron, Sunday (AP)
|
|
|
 |
Hebron, Sunday (AP)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| By Israel Insider staff and partners May 8, 2006 |
|
| |
 |
| Israeli police carry a woman from a disputed house in Hebron, Sunday. (AP) |
| |
Baton-wielding Israeli police expelled three families and dozens of Jewish supporters hold up inside a disputed home in Hebron on Sunday. The operation was an important test for the new government of PM Ehud Olmert, who plans a broad pullout from Judea and Samaria during his four-year term.
In another sign that he means business, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet's first session that he will also crack down on internationally condemned unauthorized outposts.
Olmert wants to withdraw from most of Judea and Samaria and draw Israel's borders by 2010, a program that infuriates many who view the whole territory as the Jewish biblical birthright.
Olmert has said he would proceed even without a peace deal with the Palestinians, similar to last summer's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Hours before the Hebron eviction began, officers and settlers clashed as officers cleared a crowd of protesters gathered outside the home. Settlers inside threw stones, bottles and firebombs at security forces, police said.
The evacuation of the three-story building took just over two hours. Police stormed the building after sawing through a barricaded metal door. They appealed to the settlers - some with toddlers and babies - to leave peacefully, and some agreed. But others had to be forcibly dragged out, including one woman whose infant was bawling as officers carried them out.
Jews outside the Hebron building tried to force their way inside after police in riot gear sawed off the door. But police dragged the struggling protesters away, sometimes slapping them to calm their thrashing.
Reinforcements were called in after the clashes broke out, police said. All told, about 700 police, reinforced by 1,000 soldiers, were mobilized for the operation.
Three families and 27 young sympathizers from were removed from the building, police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said. Nineteen police officers were injured and 17 settlers were arrested, he said. Army Radio said seven settlers were slightly injured.
Settlers said they bought the building, but Israel's Supreme Court ruled key documents were forged and ordered the evacuation.
Olmert waited just minutes after the Hebron operation ended before telling his Cabinet that he would also remove unauthorized outposts in Judea and Samaria, another flashpoint between the government and the settlers.
"In the next few years, we will change Israel's character to ensure it will be a state with a solid Jewish majority living in defensible borders that can provide security to the residents of Israel," Olmert said a short while later at a ceremony marking his official entrance into the Prime Minister's Office. The parliament approved his coalition government on Thursday.
"In every case where the law is violated, we will respond without compromise, and we won't reconcile ourselves to illegal facts on the ground," Olmert's office quoted him as saying.
A government-commissioned report issued last year said settlers have established 105 unauthorized outposts in the past decade. Settlers say openly that the outposts, sometimes no more than a mobile home and an Israeli flag on a barren hilltop, are designed to break up Palestinian areas and prevent establishment of a Palestinian state.
Israel promised the U.S. to dismantle about two dozen outposts set up since Ariel Sharon was first elected prime minister in March 2001, but little action has been taken.
But in Hebron, always a powderkeg because of the extremists among both Jewish and Palestinian residents, Olmert signaled that the threat of violence will not deter him.
"Every Arab can buy a house in Hebron and no one will evacuate them, but because we are Jews they evacuate us," complained Orit Struk, a Hebron settler who was inside the building during the evacuation. "This is the direction the Olmert government wants to go: expulsion and evacuation of Jews."
Hebron is home to about 160,000 Palestinians and 500 Jews who live in heavily fortified enclaves.
Israel pulled out of Gaza last summer, removing 8,000 settlers, encountering anger, tears and some resistance from settlers and their backers. Olmert's plan means moving tens of thousands of settlers from their homes, emptying the most "ideological" of the settlements, where some Jews have brought up two generations of children with the belief that God gave them the land and no government, even theirs, can take it away.
AP contributed to this report.
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
