The Seattle Times
Nation & World: Friday, December 20, 2002
Jewish settlers evicted from West Bank
By Pamela Sampson
The Associated Press
JERUSALEM — Israeli police evicted 200 Jewish settlers yesterday from a makeshift encampment on the West Bank where Palestinian militants killed 12 Israelis last month.
Shouting through loudspeakers and backed by soldiers, police ordered the settlers off the settlement they crudely constructed on a road into the West Bank city of Hebron. The site was near the site at which Islamic Jihad militants ambushed Israeli soldiers and security guards Nov. 15.
With rain pouring down, scuffles broke out in ankle-deep mud as soldiers removed the shipping containers the settlers had set up at the foot of a slope. Settlers, some chanting prayers, clung to the containers' metal handles as they were dragged away.
Seven settlers were arrested, and several soldiers suffered minor injuries, the army said.
The settlers vowed to rebuild the outpost, which they named "Heroes of Hebron" after the people killed in last month's ambush on a pathway leading from the settlement of Kiryat Arba, just outside of town, and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a shrine sacred to both Jews and Muslims.
Hebron, where about 500 Jewish settlers live among 130,000 Palestinians, is a frequent flashpoint for violence. Two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian gunmen last week near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, revered as the burial place of the biblical Abraham.
The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has promised to widen the road leading from Kiryat Arba to the tomb, and the army wants to demolish 15 Palestinian homes along the route to do so. However, Israel's Supreme Court has blocked the demolitions temporarily.
David Wilder, spokesman for the Hebron settlers, accused Sharon's government of ordering the eviction to divert attention from the corruption scandal that has embroiled his Likud Party before parliamentary elections.
"This morning's eviction of families and others from the 'Hebron Heroes' neighborhood and the demolishing of the site was a disgrace, another stain on Ariel Sharon's already filthy shirt," Wilder said.
In another development, Israeli opposition leader Amram Mitzna said yesterday that he would only allow his Labor Party into a coalition government that accepted his policy of withdrawal from Palestinian territories.
Mitzna leads his party into general elections Jan. 28. He has said if he is elected, he will seek a negotiated treaty with the Palestinians, but if a deal could not be attained he would order a unilateral Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.
Earlier this week he ruled out any alliance with Likud.
EDIT. Thank the good Lord for Liberals!!!!!!!!!!!
Sharon says a national unity government is essential as Israel battles a 26-month-old Palestinian uprising and a major economic slump.
President Bush, criticized abroad for seeming to ignore the Israeli-Palestinian problem while focusing on Iraq, will host key European and United Nations leaders today in Washington, D.C., to hear their concerns that the administration's Mideast peace initiative is adrift.
A "quartet" of Middle East mediators is to meet to discuss a three-stage plan for rapprochement that would guarantee statehood for Palestinians and security for Israel.
But the so-called peace road map looked likely to languish after the United States proposed to its Quartet partners — the United Nations, European Union and Russia — that it be put on hold pending Israel's Jan. 28 general elections.
Bush told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that the United States was not ready to press ahead with a Middle East peace plan, although he remained committed to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as soon as possible.
Israel's attorney general said in a statement yesterday that he has moved to disqualify a slate of candidates from running, accusing the party of harboring anti-Israeli sympathies and supporting Palestinian militants.
The National Democratic Assembly denied the accusations and said it would appeal to the Supreme Court if the Central Election Committee ruled against it.
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