Hebron, West Bank – Israeli security forces armed with sledge hammers, chain saws and power clippers smashed through the fortified doors of a building in the holy city of Hebron on Tuesday to evict two Jewish settler families and hundreds of supporters.
The military operation was meant to reduce conflict between settlers and Palestinians in the volatile West Bank town, but it also highlighted the growing schism between some religious soldiers and an army command that orders them to carry out evacuations they deplore.
Settlers spat and hurled stones, water and oil as police, backed by soldiers, broke through the reinforced doors and dragged the squatters out one by one. Three settlers had sealed themselves inside a concrete bunker, and it took three hours to drill through a wall to get them out.
Danny Poleg, a police spokesman, said four soldiers, 14 police officers and 12 settlers were injured during the evacuation. Eleven settlers were briefly detained and two arrested.
The scenes were reminiscent of the forced evacuations of thousands of settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank two years ago. Many of those settlers also resisted leaving and had to be dragged screaming and crying from their homes.
Israeli Vice Premier Haim Ramon, a key ally of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said last month that unlike the unilateral pullouts of 2005, a future West Bank withdrawal should be part of a negotiated peace settlement with the Palestinians. He said he foresaw Israel pulling out of most of the West Bank, except for a few large clusters of settlements.
But such a pullout would likely enrage settlers, many of whom angrily protested Tuesday’s action in Hebron.
Noam Arnon, a spokesman for the Hebron settlers, called Tuesday’s evacuation a “crime against justice and against Jewish history.”
An Israeli watchdog group opposed to the settlements, meanwhile, accused them of creating a media circus to try to deter the government from carrying out future clearances.
“The next time the government will think twice about evacuating people,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, a leader of the Peace Now group.
Hebron, a frequent flashpoint of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, is home to about 500 Jewish settlers living in heavily guarded enclaves among some 160,000 Palestinians. Clashes between the sides are frequent.
The operation 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 the rebellion.
