Israeli police evict settlers
07/05/2006 - 16:29:45Baton-wielding Israeli police evicted Jewish squatters from a disputed Palestinian home in Hebron today, demonstrating the new government’s resolve to confront settlers even in the most volatile places.
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 wildcat settlement outposts.
Olmert wants to withdraw from most of the West Bank and draw Israel’s borders by 2010, a programme that infuriates the settlers, many of whom 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-storey 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 dragged out.
Reinforcements were called in after the clashes broke out, police said. All told, about 700 police, reinforced by 1,000 soldiers, were mobilised for the operation.
Three families and 27 young sympathisers 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 unauthorised West Bank outposts, 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 unauthorised 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 US 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 signalled that the threat of violence will not deter him.
Elsewhere, a 55-year-old Palestinian civilian was killed in Israeli shelling in Gaza, Palestinian hospital officials said. The Israeli army denied firing there.
Israel has been shelling the area in recent weeks to try to curb Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel. The artillery fire has killed other civilians in the past, including a 60-year-old farmer on Saturday.
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