The Israel Defense Forces and police deployed reinforcements in the West Bank city of Hebron early on Monday, fearing a new outbreak of rioting as thousands of Jews were expected to attend a memorial ceremony for a settler killed by terrorists late last year, Army Radio reported.
The IDF is threatening to declare the Jewish settlement in Hebron a closed military area if settler riots against policemen and soldiers do not stop.
The riots, which entered their third straight day on Sunday, have involved settlers throwing stones as well as eggs and paint balloons at soldiers and policemen. The rioters' goal is to thwart implementation of the army's order to evacuate Jewish squatters from the city's wholesale vegetable market.
The evacuation order went into effect Sunday, but the army has a month in which to carry it out. The government has promised the High Court of Justice that the eight Jewish families will be removed by the end of February. Nevertheless, the settlers decided not to wait until the army actually began implementing the order; instead, they began violent protests against it last week.
According to army sources, Sunday's riots were the worst to date. At one point, the situation became so bad that Colonel Moti Baruch, commander of the Hebron Brigade, cocked his rifle next to the rioters in an attempt to deter them.
Army sources defended this decision, saying that he was obliged to act to protect his soldiers, who were endangered. They also said that if the rioting continued, the security forces would have to use tear gas against the settlers.
In response to the riots, senior IDF officers said Sunday night that the army is considering declaring the Jewish area of Hebron a closed military zone. That would enable soldiers to block the entry of extremists from outside Hebron who have been coming to bolster the protesters.
The army also intends to forcibly remove the estimated few hundred people who have already come from outside Hebron to participate in the riots.
What is happening in Hebron ‘can no longer be called an escalation. It is a completely new situation,’ said one senior army officer. ‘We are facing Jews who are conducting pogroms against Arab property.’
Moreover, he said, this is not just a local confrontation over the evacuation of a few families: Some of the rioters are challenging the state and the rule of law altogether.
According to the officer, the Yesha Council of settlements has no control over the rioters. Some of them, he said, are influenced by extremist rabbis, but others are acting completely on their own.
The police, meanwhile, declared a policy of ‘zero tolerance’ against the rioters Sunday, and Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi ordered hundreds of additional policemen, including mounted police, to the city, along with water cannons to aid in crowd dispersal. IDF sources said that the security forces ultimately would probably have to use tear gas to deal with the rioters.
Based on the events of the past few days, the IDF and police now believe that thousands of soldiers and policemen will be needed to evacuate the squatters. Both services are also currently preparing for the evacuation of the illegal outpost of Amona, near Ofra, plus three other outposts near Nablus whose dismantlement was ordered recently by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.
One of the Nablus-area outposts will probably be the first to go, with the evacuation tentatively scheduled for the end of this week or the beginning of next week.
‘In Hebron, a clear banner has been raised, which presages what will happen in the coming weeks,’ said another senior army officer. ‘But the rioters are mistaken if they think they will manage to deter us in this fashion. We will devote as many troops as are needed to carry out this mission.’
Mofaz also vowed Sunday that the state would keep its promise to the High Court despite the riots and ordered the army to act forcefully against the rioters. He also urged Hebron settler leaders to try to calm the situation ‘before it's too late.’
Police vow 'zero tolerance policy'
Police vowed yesterday to institute a ‘zero tolerance’ policy toward settler violence in Hebron, as the rioting there entered a third day, with dozens of settlers throwing stones at policemen and soldiers.
The rioting is aimed at thwarting the planned evacuation of eight Jewish families that have been squatting in the city's wholesale vegetable market for the last four years.
According to police and army officers, some 300 settlers - most of them children and teenagers, and some of them extremists from other settlements who came to Hebron last week to join the fight against the evacuation - participated in Sunday's rioting.
However, only seven people were arrested. Police said that many of the rioters wore masks, making it difficult to identify them.
Sunday's events began with a march by settlers toward a checkpoint separating their neighborhood from a Palestinian one. When soldiers tried to prevent them from passing the checkpoint, a riot erupted, during which settlers threw stones, eggs and paint at soldiers and policemen. Settlers charged that soldiers beat two children with their rifle butts.
Most Hebron settlers seemed to support the rioters, terming the level of violence around them as appropriate to the ‘terrible plot to expel Jews.’
‘This is not Gush Katif,’ said one community spokesman, referring to the generally peaceful evacuation of the Gaza settlement bloc. ‘Here, the battle will be fierce.’
But the spokesman denied that settlers were deliberately throwing rocks at soldiers. Rather, he said, a stone-throwing battle had erupted between settlers and Palestinians, and some soldiers got caught in the cross-fire.
In response to the rioting, Karadi yesterday boosted the number of policemen deployed in Hebron to 150.
‘In Hebron, people have learned that if they use violence, the establishment will usually cave in, and they'll get what they want,’ explained a police source. ‘Now, we are seizing the reins, and we will no longer allow the mob to dictate. We will create a policy of zero tolerance in Hebron.’
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert backed this policy on Sunday, ordering the security forces to act aggressively to stop the rioting. Speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting, Olmert said: ‘In recent days, extremist elements have violently attacked security service personnel who have come to enforce the law in Hebron. The government will not accept unbridled and riotous behavior such as that of the last few days, and particularly the day before yesterday, in Hebron.’
‘Israel is a country of law, and those who raise their hands against members of the security forces will be punished extremely severely,’ Olmert added.
The Yesha Council of settlements has thus stayed away from the battle in Hebron, both because most of its members object to the violence and because they are focused on organizing resistance to the planned evacuation of the outpost of Amona, near Ofra.
However, some right-wing rabbis are organizing a petition urging soldiers to refuse to participate in the evacuation of the Hebron market.
The market was first evacuated of its Jewish residents 11 years ago, following Baruch Goldstein's massacre of Muslim worshipers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The civil administration later recommended that parts of the market that originally belonged to Jews - before the Arab riots of 1929 and 1936 drove the city's Jewish residents out - be leased to the settlers, but the government rejected this idea.
Four years ago, settlers moved back into the market illegally, and for a while, the government turned a blind eye. But after left-wing organizations petitioned the High Court of Justice, Mofaz promised to evacuate the squatters by February.
Jonathan Lis and Gideon Alon contributed to this story.