Posted on 01/16/2006 11:09:17 AM PST by avile
Army declares City of Patriarchs a "closed military zone" By Israel Insider staff and partners January 16, 2006
A Jewish girl is taken into custody by security forces.
The army declared Hebron, the City of the Jewish Patriarchs, a closed military zone forbidden to non-resident Israelis.
Israeli police seized buildings and rooftops in a Jewish settler enclave in the holy city of Hebron on Monday, restoring order after three days of riots sparked by plans to evict Israeli squatters from an abandoned Palestinian market.
The closure and scuffles could signal the opening salvo in a battle over the West Bank, if Israel follows its pullout from the Gaza Strip last summer with further withdrawals from territory that has far more biblical resonance.
Settler leaders and rabbis demanded that acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert back down and abandon his plan to dismantle the outpost in a Hebron market and several other unauthorized settlements across the West Bank slated for destruction in the coming weeks.
Olmert stood his ground, saying he ordered security forces to deal sternly with the defiant settlers.
"There will be no forgiveness or compromises with this unacceptable behavior," he said Monday. "There are red lines that we will not allow to be crossed."
The fight over Hebron, where tradition says the biblical Jewish patriarchs are buried, has special resonance for the settlers. Many of the settlers here are extreme, religious nationalists and the city has been the scene of harsh fighting during the five years of Israel-Palestinian violence.
Hebron is the only West Bank city divided between Palestinian and Israeli zones. Israeli forces control the center of the city, where about 500 settlers live in several compounds. Settlers often clash with local Palestinians.
Olmert spoke about Hebron after being named acting head of the centrist Kadima Party in place of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who suffered a massive stroke Jan. 4. Sharon formed Kadima last year after rebellious lawmakers from his hardline Likud Party tried to torpedo his pullout from Gaza and four isolated West Bank settlements. Many Israelis assumed Sharon planned further withdrawals, if his party won March 28 elections as polls indicate.
The New Yorker magazine reported Monday that Sharon's National Security Council had been considering four different West Bank evacuation plans: dismantling isolated settlements, removing a whole settlement region, evacuating 88 percent of the West Bank and evacuating 92 percent of the territory.
At the same time, Sharon's aides were discussing withdrawing to Israel's separation barrier -- which includes major settlement blocs on the Israeli side -- in exchange for U.S. recognition of the barrier as Israel's permanent border, the New Yorker reported.
Sharon spokesman Asaf Shariv said several pullout options had been considered by the National Security Council ahead of the Gaza withdrawal, but "I don't know about anything since then that is new."
The Maariv daily reported Monday that Labor leader Amir Peretz also was considering calling for a large-scale unilateral pullout from the West Bank. Peretz spokesman Tom Wegner would not confirm the report.
Hoping to show the government that future withdrawals will not be as painless as the Gaza pullout, hundreds of protesters flocked to Hebron _ where the settlers live among 170,000 Palestinians _ to fight eviction orders given to eight settler families.
The families moved into an empty Palestinian market four years ago after Palestinian gunmen killed a 10-month-old Jewish baby and they ignored an Israeli court order that gave them until Jan. 15 to voluntarily leave. The army said it would remove them within a month.
"It's important to say 'No,"' settler spokesman David Wilder said. "You can't let them chop up your land and give it to your enemy."
The protesters, many of them teenagers and some of them masked, began rampaging through the area Friday, torching empty Palestinian shops and a home, throwing stones at Palestinian houses and trying to rush off-limits areas of the city.
On Monday, hundreds of youth milled about the market and ate fruit and bread left out for them in huge crates. Many wore T-shirts left over from the Gaza protests, reading: "We won't forget, we won't forgive." One wore a set of dog tags listing all the dismantled settlements.
Suddenly, riot police, border police and officers on horseback charged through the market and into the nearby Avraham Avinu settlement enclave, where many of the youth had camped out on mattresses scattered across the floor of a guest house.
The police stormed the buildings and forced the youth to evacuate the rooftops where they had fled. The protesters hurled curses at the police, shoved them and called them American lackeys. Three girls were arrested, police said.
Israel's police commander in Hebron, Avi Harush, said the operation targeted "those same lawbreakers especially the masked people ... who are throwing rocks, paint and other objects at us, and the goal is to bring them down from the rooftops and restore control to the police and the army."
"We have a zero tolerance policy against people who use violence against police and soldiers and vandalize Palestinian property," he said.
Authorities were discussing whether to declare the settlement a closed military zone, which would bar anyone who is not a resident from entering, Harush said.
Two separate groups of rabbis sent letters to Olmert on Monday demanding he cancel the plan to evacuate the market and other outposts. One letter, signed by 20 rabbis, warned Olmert that he courted personal tragedy if he withdrew from any of "the Land of Israel."
The second letter, sent by a group of settler rabbis, called the eviction orders "a war against God and his Messiah."
My opinion, Israel should expel all Palestinians from Hebron, Bethlehem and anywhere else they choose (Gaza excepted). Jews were expelled from Libia, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere and never given a dime for their property.
Payback is hell but hell should come a knockin'...
Sorry, Abdul. I thought I was addressing a normal rational human being.
Have a nice day.
Perhaps not OK, but infinitely better than the cult of death, the murdering savages.
Close enough to OK in an imperfect universe.
What does that mean? Are they performing honor killings? Are they teaching their children to become suicide bombers? If you hurl epithets can you be more specific?
Where ever an Arab donkey urinates, an arab pitches his tent.
Any word from Bibi?
One does not need a consulate in one's own country.
The state of Israel extends de facto from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, and from Syria and Lebanon to the Sinai.
No, they do not need your approval, nor anyone else's, to apply their sovereignty. There can be no "palestinian" government without a "palestine". That fiction, after 50 years, still can't fly:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism."
PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977
Every person educated past the third grade knows, or ought to know that the arabs blew their one and only chance at a country in 1948. No second chances.
It is laughable in the extreme for a people to be called personna non grata in their own country!
Take your medication, please.
The attitude of certain settlers and organizations towards his memory very much is.
As is the fact that they have crossed the line and the IDF must now deal with them by force.
Just as they would deal with Palestinian rioters.
-Eric
The state of Israel extends de facto from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, and from Syria and Lebanon to the Sinai.There isn't a single government on Earth that recognizes said boundaries.
Hebron is the home of 100,000 Arabs. Clearly it will end up as part of a Palestinian state.
The consulate plan would give Israeli citizens access to Patriarchs, while keeping the true agitators away from the people of Hebron.
Quite frankly, I wouldn't be suprised if the IDF loses its patience and evacuates all the settlements. I'll leave it to those who actually live in Israel to comment on what the political fallout would be.
-Eric
One guy, a doctor, after treating victim after victim after victim of Arab terror going Postal....
Is equivalent to........
On Friday, August 23, 1929, that tranquility was lost. Arab youths started throwing rocks at the yeshiva students. That afternoon, one student, Shmuel Rosenholtz, went to the yeshiva alone. Arab rioters later broke in and killed him, and that was only the beginning.
Friday night, Rabbi Ya’acov Slonim’s son invited any fearful Jews to stay in his house. The rabbi was highly regarded in the community, and he had a gun. Many Jews took him up on this offer, and many Jews were eventually murdered there.
As early as 8:00 a.m. on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, Arabs began to gather en masse. They came in mobs, armed with clubs, knives and axes. While the women and children threw stones, the men ransacked Jewish houses and destroyed Jewish property. With only a single police officer in Hebron, the Arabs entered Jewish courtyards with no opposition.
Rabbi Slonim, who had tried to shelter the Jewish population, was approached by the rioters and offered a deal. If all the Ashkenazi yeshiva students were given over to the Arabs, the rioters would spare the lives of the Sephardi community. Rabbi Slonim refused to turn over the students and was killed on the spot. In the end, 12 Sephardi Jews and 55 Ashkenazi Jews were murdered.
A few Arabs did try to help the Jews. Nineteen Arab families saved dozens, maybe even hundreds of Jews. Zmira Mani wrote about an Arab named Abu Id Zaitoun who brought his brother and son to rescue her and her family. The Arab family protected the Manis with their swords, hid them in a cellar along with other Jews who they had saved, and found a policeman to escort them safely to the police station at Beit Romano.
The police station turned into a shelter for the Jews that morning of August 24. It also became a synagogue as the Orthodox Jews gathered there and said their morning prayers. As they finished praying, they began to hear noises outside the building. Thousands of Arabs descended from Har Hebron, shouting "Kill the Jews!" in Arabic. They even tried to break down the doors of the station.
The Jews were besieged in Beit Romano for three days. Each night, ten men were allowed to leave to attend a funeral in Hebron’s ancient Jewish cemetery for the murdered Jews of the day.
When the massacre finally ended, the surviving Jews were forced to leave their home city and resettled in Jerusalem. Some Jewish families tried to move back to Hebron, but were removed by the British authorities in 1936 at the start of the Arab revolt. In 1948, the War of Independence granted Israel statehood, but further cut the Jews off from Hebron, a city that was captured by King Abdullah's Arab Legion and ultimately annexed to Jordan.
http://www.hebron.org.il/pics/tarpat/people1.htm
http://www.hebron.org.il/pics/tarpat/people2.htm
http://www.hebron.org.il/pics/tarpat/places1.htm
http://www.hebron.org.il/pics/tarpat/aftermath.htm
http://www.hebron.org.il/1929/slides/slideshow.htm
29 people killed in 1994, because they were Muslims at prayer. (The number was smaller largely because one man in the mosque had the nerve to go after Goldstein with a fire extinguisher as he reloaded).
Some Arabs risked their lives to save Jews in 1929. Some Jews risked their lives to save Arab victims in 1994. The extremists on each side lionize the killers.
Quite a bit of equivalence.
-Eric
Only in your sick mind.
And there is one huge difference difference.
One Jewish Killer.
An entire community of Arab Killers.
With the Arabs, it always takes a village. Hell no, not just a village but an entire society of psychopaths.
The lowest form of human beings, except for their supporters.
You missed the part about Israel not needing your approval nor anyone else's?
The Germans have set up succesful concentration camps to kill human beings by the millions in Eastern Europe. Clearly that entitles them to keep running them forever.
Sometimes words are the shiniest tools of the deluded.
Where is Kahane when we need him?///////
You too
Kind of the same trouble as a Jewish State in the Arab Middle East wouldn't you say?
And in the future, a Vatican in Islamic Europe may have a similar problem.
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