Jewish settlers evicted after occupying building

HEBRON, West Bank – Israeli security forces swiftly evicted dozens of Jewish settlers from an illegally occupied building in this volatile West Bank city on Wednesday, ending a weeklong standoff that had threatened to spill over into broader violence.

The raid caught the settlers off guard. Only a day earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had moved to block the eviction order. Settler supporters in Netanyahu’s hard-line government condemned the surprise raid, a key political ally threatened to quit the coalition and settler leaders vowed retaliation.

“He is expelling us from our property and land,” said David Wilder, spokesman for Hebron’s tiny, ultranationalist settler community. “We will be back in that building. It belongs to us.”

Hebron, the traditional burial site of Abraham, the shared patriarch of both Jews and Muslims, is the only place where Jews live in the heart of a West Bank city. Arab-Israeli violence there dates back decades, and clashes are frequent.

The settlers seized the home in an overnight raid March 29, claiming they had purchased it from a Palestinian landowner. But the military subsequently ordered them to leave the building because they had not received proper approval to live there.

After Netanyahu’s call for a legal review of the matter on Tuesday, it appeared the evictions would be on hold. But government officials said Netanyahu’s attorney general determined the home should be cleared out immediately.

Hundreds of police ringed the apartment building around midday on Wednesday. Settler leaders said about 70 people moved into the building last week. But only 15 or so, including children, were inside when the raid was launched, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

He said an eviction order was ripped up by one of the people inside, but otherwise there was no resistance.