The speed with which the police and the Israel Defense Forces removed the squatters from the Nazar house in Hebron was no real surprise. The forces, which included more than 1,000 police officers and soldiers, required less than four hours to remove the three families living in the building and the dozens of young people who had joined them.
Hebron is not Amona. The struggle of the city's settlers, among the most extreme in the West Bank, does not have the supportive consensus among settlements that Amona does. The security forces also learned their lesson from that problematic evacuation three months ago. This time, the area was closed quite effectively, keeping the number of people barricading themselves in the building relatively small. The forced entry into the house also seemed to have been better planned.
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All this is not of great comfort to the Palestinian owners of the house, which was rented to settlers without the owners' knowledge by a Palestinian swindler masquerading as the property's title holder. The real owners left over the last few years due to harassment by settlers, and the IDF and the police were unable to guarantee their safety if they were to return.
Permanent military presence will no doubt be required from now on in the building and the nearby wholesale produce market to prevent repeated invasions by squatters.
Still, the operation was useful. It was a sign that the establishment will no longer ignore settlers' attempts to take over property unauthorized and by means of violence. In Hebron, where the Jewish community has swelled from attack to attack, and every murder of a Jew is answered by the "fitting Zionist response" of putting up another house or outpost, this can be considered real news.
It is a pity that the same things cannot be said of the Maon farm, about 15 kilometers south of Hebron. Palestinian children were once again attacked Saturday on their way back from school. Unfortunately for them, their route passes through the lands of the outpost and the nearby settlement of Maon. This time four children and two soldiers were slightly injured by stones thrown at them. This is the third attack in two weeks and as usual, no one involved was arrested.
In an unusual arrangement, the defense establishment pledged to the Knesset to provide the children with a permanent military or police escort through Maon. Thus, the children of Umm-Tuba are the only Palestinians in the world who, when they see an IDF Jeep, run toward it instead of away.
On Saturday the harassment took on a new dimension when a settler sicced his dog on the children, and soldiers had to fire into the air. The last time people sicced dogs on children was in the American South of the 1950s. Israeli PR can thank its lucky stars that the world media was not interested in the story that day.
Why doesn't the government stop the harassment? The army says it does not have the resources to chase after the attackers and that the police are not around on Saturdays, when the "hilltop youth" visit the outpost and most of the incidents occur. The police say the soldiers do not gather enough evidence.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz has a great deal to do. Clashes in Gaza, learning the secrets of advanced technology, appointing generals and aides. But perhaps he will signal to the military that something has changed in the territories, if he finds the time today to shake up the officers beneath him and make them finally deal seriously with the shameful situation in Maon.
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