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Hebron settlers brace for forceful evacuation
 
 
 
 
 
 
 AFP - Thursday, December  4
HEBRON, West Bank (AFP) - - Jewish settlers prepared on Wednesday to battle a forceful eviction after Israel declared a closed military area around a house in Hebron they are occupying in defiance of a court order.
The military decree followed violent protests on Tuesday involving settlers and their far right-wing supporters who hurled rocks at Palestinians, security forces, homes and cars and desecrated Muslim tombstones.
"The sector around the house has been decreed a closed military zone," a military spokesman said, adding that Israelis are now barred from entering the Palestinian areas of the southern West Bank city.
Home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, holy both to Jews and Muslims, Hebron has stood out as a flashpoint between Palestinians and Israel, which occupied the West Bank in 1967.
Despite the closure, security forces did nothing to prevent hundreds of supporters from heading to the house in solidarity with the 100 or so defiant settlers.
Soldiers on the roof also did nothing to stop young settlers from hauling buckets filled with stones to the top of the house in preparation for an eventual confrontation.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak was set to meet settler leaders on Thursday in a last-ditch effort to defuse the tensions ahead of the eviction which Israel's High Court ordered on November 16 to be carried out within 30 days.
"The High Court reached a decision and this decision will be carried out within the timeframe set by the court," Barak said in an interview with Channel 2.
He said Thursday's meeting aimed to "minimise the chances that this affair will end, God forbid, in bloodshed and violence," but warned that there was no room "for negotiations on whether they will be evacuated."
But a Hebron settlers spokesman declared: "We will refuse any compromise. This expulsion is illegal."
"Thousands of supporters are on their way from across the country and we will stay till the end," said David Wilder, a US-born hardline settler who acts as the spokesman for what residents call the "House of Peace" but is now better known as the "House of Contention."
Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made it clear the settlers will be removed.
"Since the High Court ruled in favour of the evacuation, it will be evacuated," Olmert said.
President Shimon Peres said the incidents were causing considerable harm to Israel, saying: "Whoever throws a stone at a soldier attacks the state, and we cannot allow that," he said.
Twenty Palestinians and 18 Israelis were reported injured in clashes that started on Monday night and continued on Tuesday.
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas said it was the responsibility of the Israeli government to end the violence.
Despite a significant police and army presence in Hebron, including an observation post on the roof of the house and a roadblock outside, security forces maintained a low profile during the latest violence and similar previous incidents.
"The army and the police have thus far handled the violence miserably," said an editorial in the Haaretz newspaper.
Police, however, dislodged a few dozen people who briefly took over another Hebron house that has remained empty since settlers were evicted in 2006.
The settlers insist they have a God-given right to all of the biblical land of Israel and that they are legally in the house, which a Jewish-American businessman claims he bought to allow more Jews to live in Hebron.
The original Palestinian owner denies selling the house, and the High Court has ordered the settlers out until ownership can be determined.
Settlers consider the house a strategic asset because it is about half-way between Kiryat Arba settlement, home to 6,500 Israelis, and Hebron city centre where about 600 hardline Jews live under heavy military protection.
The settler presence in the Palestinian city of 170,000 has long caused tensions. In 1994, a Jewish extremist massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site holy to Jews and Muslims alike.
The international community considers Jewish settlements in the West Bank to be illegal, and the Palestinians say they are the biggest obstacle to Middle East peace talks.
 
 
 
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