The Wild West Bank

Recently there has been rioting by orthodox Jewish youths in Hebron at the "House of Peace" (Beit Hashalom). The settlers claim that they bought this house from the Arab owner for one million dollars, and the buyers have shown the papers to the press and to the court. However, the Arab owner (maybe under pressure) now claims that he never sold the house, and the courts, right up to the Supreme Court, have ruled that the transaction was not legitimate, and so the Court has ordered the Jewish occupants to evacuate the house. The Jews have refused to do so and so now there has been a violent confrontation between the Jewish occupants and the IDF, and the area of Hebron has been declared a closed military zone.
The Jewish residents have called in reinforcements and the youths there have rioted and thrown stones at Arab houses, broken into Arab cars and set them on fire, desecrated a Muslim cemetary and generally caused mayhem. This is a volatile situation since there are over 100,000 Arabs in Hebron and so far they have mainly stood by and watched the IDF battle the extremist Jews.
Thursday morning there was a meeting between the representatives of the settlers and the Minister of Defense Ehud Barak to see if a peaceful solution could be found to the conflict, but no agreement was arrived at. This afternoon, soon after the meeting, Barak ordered the IDF forces to go in and evict the settlers according to the Supreme Court order. Now it is possible that this is all political as the settlers claim, because the Court is rather left-wing and Barak is the Head of the Labor Party. But, in general, most people, including Olmert and Netanyahu, agree that such rioting cannot be allowed, especially if the Supreme Court has ruled.
The handling of the evacuation of Beit Hashalom was very well done, the riot police went in in full garb and spread out very quickly throughout the large house, and then brought out the occupants one at a time, two policemen to each individual. Meanwhile when they were evicted the IDF removed the participants from the area. Although there was some fighting and some were injured and about 20 arrested, there was no bloodshed, and so the outcome was tolerable.
As a result of the success of this evacuation, further youths were attempting to reach Hebron and to close the road to Jerusalem. In this they were unsuccessful and the whole of Judea was declared a closed military zone, so that the IDF and police could stop any continuation of the rioting. This is certainly not the last clash we will see and this general issue will continue to bedevil us for some time.