WEST BANK: Jewish settlers clash with Israeli police forces in West Bank neighbourhood

Israeli police clashed with Jewish settlers holed up in a West Bank neighbourhood on Monday (February 19, 2007). Palestinian witnesses said several dozens of Jewish settlers broke into a Palestinian shop in the market section of the old city at nightfall on Sunday (February 18). Local Jews said that some of the settlers have bee residing in the structure for several months. Israeli police forces, carrying a court warrant, persuaded dozens of settlers to leave, but had to forcibly drag or carry out several settlers who were holed up inside the shop, near a heavily fortified Jewish settlement in the biblical city. Scuffles erupted at the site as the settlers, including women and youths, resisted the evacuation. "Do not destroy. Do not touch. Where do you want to find yourself? with your police chief or Arik (Ariel) Sharon?" chanted a settler woman in the face of a police officer, referring to the comatose Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who evacuated some 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza in summer 2005. Police arrested at least one settler before leaving the market area near a Hebron enclave that Israel recognises as a Jewish settlement. After the police left, some of the settlers remained in the building, Jewish witnesses reported. Jewish settlers first moved to Hebron shortly after the 1967 war and have expanded their quarter in part by moving into buildings that once housed Arabs who were forced to flee the city before Israel was founded in 1948.

ITN Source | February 19, 2007

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