Settlers Stay, Or It's Civil War

By Cherrie Heywood

Left: Baruch Goldstein

"RAMALLAH, West Bank, Nov 26 (IPS) - The resolution of the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict and future stability in the Middle East could hinge on Hebron, a little town in the southern Palestinian West Bank, 30 km south of Jerusalem.

Thousands of Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers were put on high alert over the weekend as 20,000 Israeli settlers from across the West Bank descended on Hebron.

The settlers were there to mark an annual Jewish pilgrimage and lend their support to a group of fellow settlers threatened with eviction by an Israeli court ruling. The Israeli government feared an outbreak of rioting.

Hebron is home to approximately 600 of Israel's most extreme Israeli settlers, who are surrounded by a Palestinian population of more than 170,000, and protected by several thousand Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers.

Baruch Goldstein, a doctor who had emigrated from the U.S. machine-gunned 29 Palestinians to death in 1994 as they prayed in Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque during the holy month of Ramadan.

Hebron settlers later built a shrine to him, and many settlers from the occupied territory pay their respects to the late doctor, who was beaten to death by survivors, during visits to the shrine.

There are about 430,000 Israeli settlers living in hundreds of settlements throughout the West Bank, which are illegal according to international law and UN Security Council resolutions.

A recent UN report documented 222 settler attacks against Palestinians and Israeli security forces in the first half of this year, against a total of 291 for the whole of last year....."