Tel Aviv/Ramallah/Gaza - More than two weeks of heightened
tensions in Hebron boiled over Tuesday, with dozens of radical Jewish
settlers rioting in the southern West Bank city.
The settlers threw stones at Palestinians and at Israeli police
and soldiers, spray-painted slogans and damaged graves.
Local Palestinians also hurled stones at the settlers, seriously
injuring an Israeli teenager who was hit in the head.
Dozens more were lightly injured, with Palestinians reporting at
least 36 wounded and settlers some 18.
An Israeli police spokesman said two settlers were arrested.
The rioting erupted after some 1,500 Jewish settlers arrived in
Hebron late Monday amid rumours that the Israeli authorities were
about to forcibly evacuate a disputed house occupied by settlers.
Israel's supreme court on November 16 ordered the Israeli
government to evacuate what is known in the Israeli media as the
'House of Contention.'
Since then hundreds of hardline and radical Israelis have arrived
at the house as 'reinforcements,' vowing to prevent the evacuation.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak in turn has vowed not to bow to
the threats and carry out the court order at an unexpected time.
Jewish settlers occupied the house in early 2007, saying they were
the tenants of an American Jew who purchased it and that they have
documents proving it. Its Palestinian owner however denies this.
The Israeli supreme court in its November 16 ruling ordered the
house be handed over to the state until a lower court rules about its
rightful owner.
Hebron's settlers are considered among the most radical in the
West Bank. The historic Biblical city is divided into an Israeli- and
a Palestinian-controlled part under a 1997 agreement. Some 600 to 800
Jewish settlers, heavily guarded by Israeli soldiers, live among a
Palestinian population of some 200,000 in the what is the largest
city in the West Bank.
The Israel Air Force meanwhile launched an airstrike in
the southern Gaza Strip Tuesday afternoon, killing two militants and
injuring at least two others, hospital officials said.
An Israeli army spokesman said the airstrike was launched at a
group of militants who had just fired a mortar shell toward Israel's
border crossing with the southern Gaza Strip of Kerem Shalom.
The armed wing of the radical Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza
said its militants fired six such mortar shells at the crossing since
the morning.
Israel has imposed a near-total closure of the Gaza Strip for 27
days now, in response to renewed rocket and mortar fire from the
strip, which followed a November 4 clash between Israeli soldiers and
Palestinian militants which left five Hamas gunmen dead.
Since then, Israel has all but completely shut its borders with
Gaza, so far allowing in only three convoys amounting to some 104
trucks with humanitarian aid and medical supplies, in addition to
limited amounts of industrial diesel and cooking gas.
The new cycle of violence has all but shattered a five-month-old
ceasefire brokered by Egypt.
The truce is to expire December 19. Hamas began talks with other
militants factions active in Gaza, which were expected to last into
next week, on whether to extend the truce, meeting with the Islamic
Jihad first on Tuesday, spokesman Ayman Taha said.
A Qatari ship with one ton of medical aid meanwhile set sail from
the Cyprian port city of Larnaca and was due to arrive in Gaza later
this week, a Palestinian official said.
'The ship also carries representatives of relief agencies and
journalists,' Jamal al-Khodary, who heads the strip's Popular
Committee Against the Siege of Gaza, told reporters.
His announcement came one day after Israel ordered a Libyan aid
ship heading for Gaza to turn around. The Libyan voyage was the first
attempt by an Arab state to defy the Israeli closure.
Israeli soldiers also fatally shot a Palestinian militant in the
West Bank city of Nablus late Monday as they attempted to arrest him.
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