UPDATE (Wednesday, 1:45 p.m. local): The Hebron police and the IDF evacuated this morning a house in Palestinian Hebron that had been occupied by Jewish settlers since last Thursday. The evacuation was preceded by a political back-and forth between government officials on the issue. Leading Likud members, including deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon have accused Defense Minister Barak of not respecting government policy. Some Likud members demanded that Prime Minister Netanyahu stop the evacuation.
Earlier today, security sources told Israeli media that the evacuation would take place only after Passover. Around noon the army made the settlers leave the house, located near the Cave of the Patriarchs.
This text was posted during the standoff between the army and the settlers
In many ways, the settler movement was born in Hebron, when religious Jews moved into a hotel in the occupied city on Passover in 1968. Settlers – often with the support of the government – have been trying to take over new houses in the city ever since. Roughly 20 percent of Hebron is affected by their presence: the army keeps a permanent presence in the area, shops have been closed, the Arab market was shut down, streets are blocked to Palestinian traffic and Jewish-only routes (like this one) declared. Following harassment from settlers, Palestinians are trying to move to other parts of the city. A survey conducted by B’Tselem and ACRI in 2007 found that at least 1,014 Palestinian housing units in the center of Hebron have been vacated by their occupants. This number represents 41.9 percent of all housing units in the relevant area.
According to an investigative report by Haaretz, the settler group that moved into the house this week bought it through a middleman, taking advantage of the dropping real-estate prices in the area of the city closer to the settlers’ homes. The settlers say that they have established legal claim over the house, and therefore have the right to continue occupying it. But such procedural arguments are totally out of context: the whole legal reality in the West Bank has to do with the IDF being the sole sovereign power since 1967. Under the military law the local commander has the authority to take control of every property he deems necessary for his purposes. Another IDF order, valid in Hebron but never implemented, demands that the army authorize every new settlement in advance. There is thus no legal problem with evacuating the settlers.
Here is a video of the forceful evacuation of the Palestinian group “Youth Against Settlements” from an empty property, which they feared was about to fall into the hands of the settlers:
While Palestinians are subject to military decisions which they cannot influence or object to, their settler neighbors enjoy legal rights under Israeli law, as well as the protection of their elected officials in the Knesset and government. Today, numerous Likud ministers paid a visit to Hebron, publicly protesting the intention to evacuate the settlers from their newly captured house. Indeed, the evacuation was postponed, with Netanyahu publicly urging Defense Minister Barak to let the settlers “exhaust their legal rights.”
Many of the reports regarding new colonization efforts in Hebron are indeed Israeli political theater. With elections expected to take place within a year or so, some ministers and Knesset members are trying to position themselves to the right of Prime Minister Netanyahu as advocates of new settlement projects. At the same time, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has probably given up on the hope that Netanyahu will place him and his party members from “Independence” on the Likud list for the next Knesset, so he needs to make his own political stand that would appeal to the center. Demanding the removal of an outpost or the evacuation of a single house is the perfect opportunity for him. In short, everyone is winning from the “conflict.”
UPDATE: As expected, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Defense Minister Barak continue to publicly attack each other over the issue, with Ya’alon calling on the government to take away Barack’s authority to deal with the settlement in Hebron, and Barak accusing Yaalon of trying to win the hard-right voices.
This scenario is likely to repeat itself in the coming months, as the Supreme Court deadline for the evacuations of four outposts in the West Bank approaches. Yet we should make no mistake – even if the house in Hebron is emptied or the outposts destroyed, the commitment of the government to expanding the existing settlements and moving as many Jews as possible into the occupied, segregated West Bank remains as strong as ever.
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Jack
The video clearly shows what Israel would have done with squatters if they happend to belong to the “wrong” ethnicity.
XYZ
The Jewish presence in Hevron is the key to peace. When the Arabs accept the Jewish presence there and there will be no need for a large IDF deployment and everyone will live better in the city. This will be the signal of real peace in the whole country between Jews and Arabs. To remove the Jews from Hevron is a recipe for continued conflict, just as the expulsion of the Jews from the city in 1929 and 1936 marked the beginning of the decades-long conflict between Jews and Arabs in the country. The return of Jews to Hevron hopefully marks the turning around of the situation. If the Arabs would welcome the Jews who have lived more or less continuously for 4000 years in the city it would be better for everyone.
Remember-
If Jews have a right to live in Tel Aviv, they have a right to live in Hevron. If Jews do not have a right to live in Hevron, they have no right to live in Tel Aviv. The Arabs know this, its about time the rest of the Israeli Jews realized it.
Jack
There is an easy way to push settlers out of the area, IDF should say, we are leaving, you could leave too or stay here by your own.
Rest assured, they would have moved directly. Settlers are only there because they are protected by the IDF.
JG
XYZ wrote: “The return of Jews to Hevron hopefully marks the turning around of the situation.”
That would make sense, if everything had gotten better since Jews moved back into Hebron– in 1968.
(How did you miss the summation of history that is in this article?)
aristeides
I can imagine what XYZ’s vision of “the Arabs accepting the Jewish presence” would look like. The Arabs fall down on their bellies, dressed in sackcloth and barefoot. They crawl up to the Jews and kiss their feet, then place their Jewish feet on their own necks, declaring, “O Great and Superior Race, we accept your presence in the land we foolishly considered our homeland. Here, take the deeds to our property, take the keys to our homes, it’s all yours by right. We apologize for ever considering we had a right to it. From now on, we will be happy to hew your wood and draw your water and eat of the crumbs from your table – if you are charitable enough to let them fall on the ground.”
.
And when they have done all this, the IDF will continue its presence and keep arresting Palestinians, because they MIGHT not be sincere, or they MIGHT change their minds one day.
Walter Sauerland
“Yet we should make no mistake – even if the house in Hebron is emptied or the outposts destroyed, the commitment of the government to expanding the existing settlements and moving as many Jews as possible into the occupied, segregated West Bank remains as strong as ever.”
Touché. Harriet Sherwood (THAT woman!)in the Guardian (Gewalt!) quotes settler’s spokesman David Wilders saying : “This is not the end of the story, it’s the beginning. After this, there will be more.”( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/03/israel-netanyahu-jewish-settlers-hebron )I bet Netanyahu is fully aware of this threat.
I will take the chance to point out to an incident which happened a fortnight ago.
Sigmar Gabriel,chairman of the German Social Democrats,visited Hebron.In an agitated mood and full of moral disgust he wrote on fb : ” I happen to come back from Hebron.For Palestinians this is a law-free zone.This is an apartheid regime, for which there is no justification” He hurriedly rowed back after harsh criticism from Germany’s governing CDU ( put forward via ‘Bild Zeitung ‘) and confined the term ‘apartheid’ to the Hebron situation only. At least he kept to his judgement that the humiliating
treatment of Palestinians in Hebron causes great anger to anybody, may he even be a stout backer of Israel.He wrote on fb :” I can only recommend to everyone to travel there and go around led by the intl observers.” There s the point : Like lots of Europeans who travel to Israel ,Gabriel until now just saw the ‘magic’ side of Israel, guided by official Israeli cicerones or Israeli friends.Once one saw the reality of the occupation at just one place, one cant avoid the suspission, that the whole occupation is a humiliating system imposed onto all Palestinians in the occupied territorries.By the way : Gabriel will probably be an important figure in the next German government.
Shaun
According to 972 Jews are should not be allowed to buy houses in Hebron?
Jack
Shaun,
Nice try. Hebron is illegally occupied, annexed palestinian territory, Israel have no authority to sell houses in Hebron.
sh
The house is in a closed military zone. Can you buy houses in closed military zones? And even if you can, can anyone get into them? And if civilians can get into them, what is a closed military zone? Or is a closed military zone only closed to Palestinians, goyim, protesters, or, put another way, only open to Jewish settlers?
ToivoS
Political theatre? That implies that at the end of the act, the actors all get up and go back home again. This is not theatre. This is part of an irreversible process whereby Jews confiscate land from Palestinians.
Sean Mullin
The Guardian in the UK reports that the purchase of the house may be fraudulent, they quote the mayor of Hebron insisting that he knows for sure the documents held by the settlers aren’t real. This article points out that that isn’t really the issue, but eye witness reports declare that the army broke down the doors to this house at 1.30 in the morning and that with 10 minutes 150 settlers where inside. So there’s a stand off? There might be a “theatrical” stand off, but this is the IDF and settlers standing together, that is how Hebron works.
sh
That’s how East Jerusalem and the West Bank works too.
Shaun
Call it what ever you like, the fact still remains that Jews are not allowed to buy houses in Hebron.
sh
You mean to say that the 500 or so families already living in downtown Hebron are renting?
aristeides
The theater is the Knesset, the act is the clown show.
XYZ
The Israeli-controlled H2 section of Hevron is NOT “downtown”, it is the southern edge of the city, and is about 5% (rough guess) of the territory of the city.
the other joe
xyz – the issue is not the size of the area, the fact is that the settlers have their own roads, security buffer zone etc, which has an extremely negative impact on the Palestinians who live in H2 and wider Hebron. I might not be the current business center of the town, but it certainly was a major part of the town when the settlers moved in.
Jack
Shaun,
Great, now you are even deny there is a occupation.
aristeides
Shaun is only parroting the relevant slogans from his harbara handbook.
Shaun
Still no answers yet?
Let try another route. If the doves here are working for a peaceful solution, be it on state, two state or whatever, Jews should have as much right to buy a house in Hebron as anyone else?
XYZ
If Arabs oppose Jews moving into Arab areas, either inside the Green Line or outside, then it is legitimate for Jews to oppose Arabs moving into Jewish neighborhoods, which also has political ramifications.
Jack
Shaun,
Sure, aslong as palestinians are free to buy a house in Tel aviv.
Shaun
Jack,
Two wrongs don’t make a right…
Selective prejudice based on the actions of other people is still racism.