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Uprooting Jews

Olmert: No compromise with law breakers...if they're Jews

Widespread illegal Arab activity is largely ignored, however


By Ryan Jones
May 07, 2006

As a handful of Jews were forcefully removed from a disputed property in the Judean city of Hebron Sunday, the new government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert patted itself on the back for having acted so swiftly and without compromise against those it deemed law breakers.

Fourteen Israeli police officers and a number of Jewish civilians were reportedly wounded, most lightly, during disturbances surrounding the eviction of three families from Bet Shapira, adjacent to Hebron's Avraham Avinu neighborhood.

Security forces were sent against the families after the government decided a deed of purchase for Bet Shapira presented by the Hebron Jewish community was a forgery, and sided with local Arabs who accused the Jews of illegally trying to retake control of the city from which King David once ruled.

Said Olmert at Sunday's weekly Cabinet meeting:

"Wherever the law is violated, wherever there is illegal squatting and wherever there are attempts to determine these kinds of facts, we will respond immediately, without compromise."

But Olmert's government, like those before his, is continuing the policy of turning a blind eye to rampant illegal Arab construction throughout the country.

Each year a token number of illegally-built Arab homes are demolished in Jerusalem and elsewhere, but officials estimate thousands of these "facts on the ground" go up every year, without any response and with total compromise from the Israeli authorities.

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