By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent
Israel Defense Forces officials are telling Jewish leaders in the West Bank city of Hebron that if they evacuate the wholesale market where eight Jewish families have been squatting for the past four years, the settlers will be able to return to the area and live there legally within a few months. The settlers have so far rejected the compromise proposal.
In the midst of a week in which hundreds of settlers rioted in Hebron to protest the evacuation and police cracked down on the Jewish neighborhoods in the West Bank city, the army has been conducting covert negotiations with leaders of the Jewish community there in an effort to prevent the settlers' forcible evacuation.
Over the past few days, the commander of the Judea brigade, responsible for the Hebron area, Colonel Motti Baruch and other officers in the brigade have received threatening SMS messages to their cell phones following the clashes with the settlers. One of the messages said: ‘Long live the fourth Reich, Heil Sharon.’
Colonel Baruch in planning to file a police complaint about the messages. The person who sent the SMS message did not conceal the phone number from which he was calling. The IDF Spokesman said in response that ‘the IDF condemns these actions.’
The area in which the market is located had been in Jewish hands from the beginning of the 19th century until after the massacre of Hebron Jews in 1929 and Jordan's 1948 capture of the city. The land was then transferred to the Jordanian official responsible for absentee property and then to the Hebron Municipality, which built the market.
The settlers described the Jewish claim to the area in petitions to the High Court of Justice against the evacuation.
The state prosecution told the High Court that the settlers' argument appears to be correct, but that they must first leave the stores in which they have been squatting illegally. Only after the settlers leave the area on their own, the prosecution said, will it be possible to examine the possibility of returning the market area to the Jews, who would then be able to live there legally.
But in talks with the settlers, the IDF went one step further.
‘Evacuate the market,’ the army said, ‘and we will make a commitment to you that, within a few months, the stores will return to your hands.’ GOC Central Command Yair Naveh made the offer with the knowledge of Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz.
Naveh is proposing that the state expropriate the right to protected accommodation in the property and transfer it to the Israeli custodian responsible for absentee property, who will lease the property to the Jewish community. Until now, the settlers have rejected the proposal, apparently for two reasons: a desire not to appear as though they are capitulating and concern that the state prosecution will ultimately fail to approve the deal.
A senior security official said he felt remorse over the settlers' position.
‘Their agreement could have saved a great deal of disorder and violence,’ he said. ‘They're also damaging their own interests.’
Compromise talks have continued in the last few days, although negotiators are maintaining a low profile. Some senior officers think that they should no longer try to work with the settlers, since they have refused to leave the area by February 15, the date by which the evacuation orders must be implemented, and have acted violently. But sources familiar with the situation have not ruled out the possibility that a compromise may yet be reached.