Battle looms at Hebron house

By Heather Sharp
BBC News, Hebron

Young men study the Torah in the bare concrete shell of the disputed building

"This is our land," reads a hand-scrawled sign on the door.

Inside, the four-storey building's rooms are concrete shells, adorned with childrens' drawings and cluttered with mattresses and sleeping bags.

In the property they have dubbed the "House of Peace", Jewish right-wingers bent on living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank are gearing up for their next major battle with the government.

Activists have been converging on the city of Hebron since a Supreme Court ruling gave several families living in the building three days to leave, permitting the government to use force to evict them if they refuse.

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About 20 families, comprising some 100 people, are living in the draughty rooms with polythene sheets for doors.

Teenage girls stuff envelopes with pleas for funds on one floor; downstairs, young men study the Torah under bare lightbulbs.

Groups of scruffy youths with sidelocks and skullcaps hang around outside, discussing favourite beers and telling stories of stone-throwing clashes with Israeli security forces.

"This is better than any squat in London," says one.

Local Palestinians say the young men throw stones at them, ratcheting up tensions in the town where several hundred settlers, known as particularly hardline, live in heavily-guarded enclaves amid some 150,000 Palestinians.

To many of these settlers, it is crucial for both religious and security reasons to maintain a Jewish presence in the West Bank, where much Jewish Biblical history was played out.

Hebron is holy to both Jews and Muslims as the site of the cave widely held as the burial site of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives. According to the book of Genesis, Abraham bought the site as a place to lay his wife Sarah to rest.

The settlers say that they bought the house in a legal transaction from its Palestinian owner Faez Rajabi for nearly US $1m.

They have footage, they say, which shows the owner counting the money taken from a Palestinian intermediary. But Mr Rajabi says he pulled out of the deal.

The courts are yet to rule on who owns the building, but say it must be vacated while the decision is made.

Political considerations

David Wilder's is spokesman for Jewish Community of Hebron, some of whom moved into the property 20 months ago.

He says that political considerations swayed the supreme court: "We're dealing with politics - with people's personal opinions and an election campaign. That it seems is what is going to determine our fate."

General elections are due in February 2009, and the presence of 450,000 Israelis in settlements in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, is an emotive issue.

The settlers throw stones at our daughters, our wives, even the old men and women… they call the Prophet Muhammad - peace be upon him - a pig, a donkey Majdi al-Jabber Hebron resident

Many of the settlements, which are considered illegal under international law, would have to be removed under most likely scenarios for a two-state peace deal.

Right-wingers fear a repeat of the 2005 scenes of Israeli soldiers forcing Jewish families from their homes in the Gaza Strip.

But many on the left in Israel long for the government to confront the hardline settler groups involved in a recent wave of attacks on Palestinians and Israeli security forces.

Mr Wilder says the settlers will "not initiate" violent clashes with security forces, and people who do not respect this will be asked to leave.

But if eviction squads come in with batons, horses and tear gas, "that will definitely push up the level of violence", he adds.

He says relations with the Palestinians in surrounding homes have been "generally quiet".

'Abuse'

But across the road, Majdi al-Jabber, 43, who built the building a decade ago, says the settlers have made life "miserable," for him and seven brothers.

"They throw stones at our daughters, our wives, even the old men and women… they call the Prophet Muhammad - peace be upon him - a pig, a donkey."

Family members gather to watch footage filmed the previous day on a camera provided by an Israeli human rights group.

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Amateur footage of alleged attacks by Hebron settlers

A skull-capped figure on the roof of the contested building can be seen swinging a sling-shot, and cracking sounds heard, apparently as stones land near the camera.

Other footage shows figures collecting stones as Israeli security forces look on.

The Israeli military says it is present to "keep the peace".

The building's location is strategic, overlooking the road that connects the 7,500 settlers living in nearby Kiryat Arba with the Cave of the Patriarchs and the centre of Hebron.

The settlers say the site is key for Israeli security operations.

But Emad Hamdan of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee says curfews and movement restrictions already make life "hell" for Palestinians on the eastern side of the city, and the settlers' battle for the house is a flagrant bid to expand their hold on the town.

Feelings run high on the Palestinian side too - on one of the videos a Palestinian woman screams repeatedly "we will stay until death".

"Every single house and every single stone is important for us… because it is our land," says Mr Hamdan.

Although Mr Wilder says the settlers' adversary is the Israeli judicial system, "not the Arabs", the supreme court ruling was met with the desecration of Muslim graves and an insult to the Prophet Muhammad was sprayed on a mosque.

And Mr Hamdan says he fears "the settlers' reaction will be towards the Palestinians", if the eviction squads come knocking.