Israel Forcibly Removes Hebron Settlers
Israeli police, using sledge hammers, chain saws and power clippers, stormed a building in the West Bank town of Hebron early Tuesday and dragged out hundreds of settlers who had holed up there illegally, hoping to expand the Jewish presence in the volatile biblical city.
Settlers spit and hurled stones, water, oil and concrete powder as police, backed by army troops, broke through fortified doors and carried out the squatters one by one. Three settlers sealed themselves inside a concrete bunker built for the standoff.
"This is a crime against justice and against Jewish history," said Noam Arnon, a spokesman for the Hebron settlers. "I am sure we will return. Hebron has a long history and we will return."
Danny Poleg, a police spokesman, said four soldiers, 14 police officers and 12 settlers were injured during the evacuation. One settler and six police were hospitalized. Eleven settlers were briefly detained and two arrested.
Hebron, a frequent flashpoint of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, is home to about 500 Jewish settlers living in heavily guarded enclaves among some 170,000 Palestinians. Clashes are frequent.
Israel controls the center of the city, including a hotly disputed holy site holy to both Jews and Muslims — the traditional burial site of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and three of their wives. Its large military presence often hinders the movement of Palestinians.
The Palestinians control the rest of Hebron.
Meanwhile, a widely-read Israeli newspaper reported Tuesday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is considering a new peace plan that calls for a land swap with the Palestinians, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.
The report comes a day after Olmert met for private talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Jericho, in the West Bank. The visit made Olmert the first Israeli leader to meet officials in a Palestinian town in seven years.
According to the report in Haaretz, Israel would offer the Palestinians the equivalent of 100 percent of the territories captured in 1967. Israel would annex 5 percent of the West Bank for major settlement blocs, but equivalent territory elsewhere would be transferred to a Palestinian state.
Haaretz said Olmert has not rejected the proposal's main concepts, but the prime minister's office issued a statement expressing "amazement at this erroneous article."
"Such a plan has not been considered, nor is it being raised for discussion in any forum," the statement said.
In other developments:
"You're Hamas people," one Israeli settler screamed repeatedly at police while being dragged from her illegal home in Hebron. The reference was to the radical Islamic group that controls the Gaza Strip and is sworn to Israel's destruction.
After forcing one of the building's doors, police encountered 30 youths singing songs who cursed the soldiers as they entered. Many sat atop a 4-foot-high concrete bunker in which three settlers had barricaded themselves. It took police three hours to bore through the neighboring wall to remove them.
Avinoam Horowitz, a local resident and high school teacher, called the eviction a "tragedy."
"Soldiers of the Jewish people are coming to do what the worst enemies used to do to Jewish people, but they are doing it to their own brothers and sisters," he said.
The two-story building evacuated Tuesday stands in the city center's marketplace, which the army shut down in 1994, after Jewish militant Baruch Goldstein opened fire at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and killed 29 Palestinians.
The settlers initially moved into the structure — a vacant store — more than six years ago, variously evacuating and re-entering it as the case made its way through the Israeli court system.
Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the settlers' presence there was illegal, but they ignored orders to evacuate. Hundreds of supporters moved into the building in recent days, reinforcing the doors and windows with metal and concrete in preparation for the raid.
Settlers claim the property was owned by Jewish families for decades until Jordanian authorities seized it after the 1948 Israeli war of independence. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967.
Elsewhere in the city, settlers have whipped up tensions by moving into a four-story building that is a gateway to the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba. The settlers say they want to create a land link between the two communities.
The operation Tuesday followed the highly publicized refusal of several Orthodox Israeli infantry soldiers to take part in the evacuation. The army sentenced a dozen soldiers, including two commanders, to brief jail terms for refusing orders.
Neither side expected Tuesday's eviction to be the last word.
"We have lots of patience," said Horowitz, the teacher. "We'll do it again until we get back our property."