Israel evicts Jewish settlers from Hebron house
HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli police used teargas and clubs to evict dozens of hard-line Jewish settlers from a disputed building in the West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday after days of stone-throwing clashes with Palestinians.
Up to 20 Israeli settlers and police were injured during the eviction, which took less than an hour to complete and was far less violent than many had expected, Israeli medics said.
Two Palestinians were shot by settlers nearby, Palestinian hospital officials said.
Tensions have been high in the flashpoint city since the Israeli High Court on November 16 ordered settlers to vacate the building they have been occupying since March 2007.
Television footage showed police dragging settlers out of the building by force, some of them kicking and screaming.
Outside the building, settlers and neighbouring Palestinians hurled rocks at each other.
Palestinian eyewitness Bassam al-Ja'abari said police stormed the building from two back entrances. "Within minutes, settlers started throwing stones at Israeli troops as well as attacking Palestinian houses," Ja'abari said.
The standoff in Hebron had raised fears that ideological friction in Israel could explode into internal violence before a February 10 parliamentary election to replace outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Olmert has publicly warned of a new ultranationalist underground that threatened both Israel and its chances of peace with the Palestinians.
Israeli military analysts said they feared the violence in Hebron could spread to other West Bank settlements as part of an organised uprising.
"This will not end here. We will come back over and over again," said Naftali Woldman, a 20-year-old Israeli supporter of the settlers.
Pointing his finger to nearby Palestinian homes, Woldman said, "All this will be Jewish land one day."
For some Israelis, the live television images evoked memories of the evacuation of thousands of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Many former Gaza settlers had vowed to prevent a repeat of the withdrawal in the West Bank.
"The removal of settlers from the house... should herald the start of the eviction of all settlers from the city," said Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Hebron has long been a flashpoint of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Some 650 settlers live in fortified enclaves guarded by Israeli troops in the heart of a city that is home to some 180,000 Palestinians.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said it was unclear how many settlers were in the building at the time of the eviction.
The settlers say they purchased the building, dubbed the "House of Contention" by the Israeli media, from a Palestinian man who denies having sold it to them.
Ahead of the eviction, hundreds of settler supporters and activists flocked to Hebron in solidarity with the building's Jewish occupants.
Before the raid, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said the building would be controlled by the Israeli security forces until courts rule on its ownership.
Barak had described the settler youths in Hebron, who clashed with Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, as "reckless."
Scores of protesters temporarily blocked one of the main entrances to Jerusalem to protest the eviction.
"I think Ehud Barak is making a colossal mistake with a confrontation that works glove in hand with the extremists," Danny Dayan, head of the YESHA settler council, told Israel's Channel 10 television.