Hebron, WEST BANK (Agencies)
Israeli police took more than 15 Jewish settlers into custody on Wednesday after clashes with Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron, a police spokesman said.
Hundreds of settlers have come to the Jewish enclave in recent days to protest against Israel's plans to remove 13 families from a building in accordance with a high court ruling.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police detained more than 15 settler youths for questioning after evicting them from another building they broke into earlier on Wednesday.
Jewish settlers prepared to battle the forceful eviction after Israel declared a closed military area around the house.
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 West Bank city.
But security forces did nothing to prevent hundreds of supporters from heading to the house in solidarity with the 100 or so settlers defying the November 16 High Court decision that the premises be vacated.
Nor did soldiers on the roof stop young settlers from hauling buckets filled with stones to the top of the house in preparation for an eventual confrontation.
Israeli media said some settlers have also thrown rocks at Israeli soldiers in the town, sparking calls by some Israeli politicians for tougher measures against the settlers. |
 |
"House of peace" Some 650 settlers live in fortified enclaves in Hebron, a flashpoint of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and city of 180,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, land Israel captured in a 1967 war
Controversy over the disputed house dubbed by settlers "the house of peace" was the latest effort on the part of settlers to expand the Jewish enclave in Hebron, a city they see as holy as the burial site of biblical patriarchs.
Settlers moved into the building in 2007 saying they had purchased it from a Palestinian. Palestinian Faiz Rajabi said the building belongs to him and denies selling it to the settlers.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Wednesday in a speech he would respect a court order of last month to evict the settlers. He said the building "will be evacuated," and that he would also take steps to avoid further violence.
Palestinians and Western countries see Jewish settlement in the occupied territory as an obstacle in U.S.-brokered peace efforts. The World Court has deemed the settlements illegal, a decision disputed by Israel. |
