Israeli troops evict settlers from W Bank market

HEBRON, West Bank, Aug 7 (Reuters) Israeli security forces removed about two dozen Jewish settlers and supporters today from empty shops they took over last year in an abandoned Palestinian market in the West Bank city of Hebron.

In the run-up to the operation, 12 Israeli soldiers, most of them Orthodox Jews who support Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, were sentenced to jail terms of up to four weeks for refusing to carry out the court-issued eviction orders.

A police spokesman said 14 police officers were injured in scuffles with the squatters, some of whom threw stones and other objects at them.

Some 650 Israelis live in heavily-guarded enclaves in Hebron, home to about 180,000 Palestinians, and have long sought to expand the Jewish presence in the biblical city.

Settlers in Hebron are among the most militant in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

The eviction operation, in which helmeted police and paramilitary border police dragged crying children out of the structures, was reminiscent of scenes from Israel's 2005 removal of settlers from the Gaza Strip.

''Police evacuated the two houses and the families that had been living (in the Hebron market) since September 2006, based on a court order issued this week,'' police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. ''Five people were arrested.'' The two settler families that took over the structures said they were once owned by Jews. The wholesale market was closed 13 years ago.

REUTERS RN KP1335