Israeli Forces Evict Settlers From Disputed Hebron Home

Israeli riot police forcibly evacuated a house filled with dozens of Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron today in the most public showdown between the government and the increasingly violent settler movement for more than two years.

Hundreds of police mounted a surprise raid on the three-storey house, which had become the latest symbol of defiance for Israeli settlers. Troops fired tear gas into the crowds and dragged settlers from the house one-by-one. Around 30 people were injured, including one policeman who had acid thrown in his eyes.

Although the house was emptied within an hour, the operation triggered broad settler protests across the occupied West Bank and in Jerusalem, which continued into the night. In Hebron masked settlers set fire to Palestinian trees and attacked buildings. The Israeli military declared the southern West Bank a closed military zone, setting up roadblocks to prevent more settlers descending on the city.

The building, dubbed the House of Peace by the settlers and the House of Contention by the Israeli press, was home to 15 settler families, but their numbers had swelled as supporters poured in. Earlier this week there were riots between the settlers and Palestinians that left several people hurt on both sides. Settlers daubed a black Star of David on several graves in a nearby Palestinian cemetery as well as the word "revenge" on a Palestinian house.

This morning the house was full mostly with young people, sitting on the cold concrete floors, praying in the hallways or playing football in the road outside. One poster on the wall read: "This land is our land."

The settlers claim they bought the house nearly two years ago from a Palestinian for just short of $1m and said they had documents and videotape as proof. However, the Palestinian has since denied selling the building to the settlers and last month the Israeli supreme court said the house should be evacuated until the ownership dispute was settled.

Just minutes before the raid, Nadia Matar, a prominent settler figure who had spent the past week living in the house, defended the project. "They were able to do what we have been doing since the beginning of Jewish history: to live in the land of Israel, to purchase land like Abraham did," she said. The house is in the Palestinian part of the city, just outside the large Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba and, Matar admitted, was a strategic asset that linked the settlement to the centre of Hebron, the burial place of the patriarch Abraham.

Like most in the house, she believes Israel has a Biblical right to take all the land between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan. All Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are illegal under international law.

Matar was one of the last to be dragged from the building and as she crouched in the dirt after being deposited by the four policemen who carried her out, she said: "Shame on the government for using all this force against us."

Ruth Hizmi was one of the first to rent an apartment in the house and she lived there with four of her children. Her flat had bare concrete walls and floor, with electricity cables stretching across the ceiling and sheets of cloth dividing the bedrooms. "We are citizens who are holding on to our country, the only country we have and they are giving it away. They are throwing Jews out of their homes," she said, just hours before the raid.

When the police arrived she was away collecting children from school but she quickly returned, forced her way through rows of police and briefly back into the house before she too was carried out. Police will now occupy the building and prevent the settlers returning.

For the settlers, holding onto the house was also an act of defiance against the Yesha Council, the traditional settler leadership, which has lost support among a younger, more radical generation, particularly after Israel removed its settlers from Gaza three years ago. But there has been growing antipathy towards the settlers within Israel itself. Yesterday the left-leaning Ha'aretz newspaper described their actions in Hebron this week as "Jewish terrorism".