HEBRON: Settlers attack Palestinians after Israeli military forcibly evacuates Occupied House

by Donna Hicks

On Thursday 4 December 2008, Israeli military and law enforcement forcibly evacuated Israeli settlers from the Occupied House, called the House of Peace or House of Contention by settlers, located between the Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba and Hebron’s Old City.  Israeli courts had ordered its evacuation pending resolution in another court of competing claims on the legality of the building’s sale to the settlers.

Around 3:00 p.m., settlers threw large building blocks, planters full of dirt and plants, clothing, hot water, and other articles down into Old City’s market area from the Israeli settlement enclave of Avraham Avinu—endangering Palestinian shopkeepers and others working and walking in the alley beneath—while an Israeli soldier watched from an adjacent roof,

Palestinian families on Tel Rumeida, above the Muslim cemetery, reported that they were barricading themselves in their homes as Israelis from the settlement enclave there threw rocks at the doors and windows and hit the doors with their gun butts.  Settlers burned some of the carpets in the mosque on Tel Rumeida, set fire to four cars parked next to the mosque and to trees near the Qurtuba Girls School, across Shuhada Street from the Beit Hadassah settlement enclave.

By late afternoon, Israeli authorities had declared Hebron and the southern West Bank a closed military zone in order to keep settlers from other parts of the West Bank from getting into Hebron to reinforce the local settlers