Israeli police evict settlers from Hebron house

HEBRON, West Bank, May 7 (Reuters) Israeli police stormed a Palestinian house in the West Bank city of Hebron today to evict Jewish settlers accused of squatting there, in an early test for the new government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Police persuaded three settler families including women and children to leave, but had to drag or carry out two dozen teenage supporters who were holed up inside the house, near a heavily fortified Jewish settlement in the biblical city.

Security forces had scuffled with scores of settlers outside after some threw Molotov cocktails from the roof of the three-storey building and others hurled rocks. Police arrested 19 settlers, while 17 policemen were lightly injured.

The house was not within the enclave of Hebron that Israel recognises as a Jewish settlement, and its evacuation offered a taste of what may happen if Olmert implements his plan to impose final borders for Israel by 2010.

In the absence of peace talks with the Palestinians, the plan calls for dozens of isolated Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank to be evacuated, while major blocks are retained and expanded behind a fortified border.

The settlers moved into the house last month, saying it had been bought from its Palestinian owners legally. Palestinian groups denied this, suspecting a gradual attempt to expand the settlement, despised as a symbol and reminder of occupation.

Israel's Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the settlers to be evicted pending a ruling on ownership.

Police said 41 settlers in total had been inside the house, refusing to leave. The police used an electric saw and a sledgehammer to break in.

''NO JUSTICE'' Some of the women from the families wept as they walked out.

''Palestinians will receive much strength today. There is no justice and no righteousness in this corrupt state,'' said Tzippora Schlissel, 40.

But there was relief among the Palestinian neighbours.

''The last month has been very difficult for us. We have had stones thrown at us and our electricity and water tampered with.

I wish all the settlers in Hebron would leave,'' said Umm Nemer, a 43-year-old mother of eight who lives next door.

Olmert has not said what his plan would mean for the 400 recognised settlers who live among 130,000 Palestinians in Hebron.

The city, a flashpoint of the conflict, is holy to both Jews and Muslims as the burial place of biblical patriarchs.

In separate violence, Palestinian fire department officials said settlers had set fire to three Palestinian cars in the city during the night.

Last year Israel evacuated 9,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and a remote northern part of the West Bank without facing much violence.

But around 200 protesters and police were injured in clashes when Israel dismantled part of an unauthorised settler outpost in the West Bank in February. Police described it as the fiercest violence they had ever faced from Israeli Jews.

About 240,000 settlers live in the West Bank among 2.4 million Palestinians, and Olmert's plan would involve moving about a quarter of them.

The Palestinians reject his plan out of hand, saying it means an annexation of their land that will permanently deny them the viable state they want in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The World Court has branded all Israeli settlements built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East war as illegal. Israel disputes this.

REUTERS OM PM1542