Netanyahu seeks to return evicted settlers to West Bank houses

Although the Israelis claim that they had bought the homes legally, the settlers did not follow established procedure during their move, said Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon.

Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri said on Thursday he had revoked the residency rights of four Jerusalem Palestinians involved in two fatal attacks on Israelis, one in September and one in October, a spokeswoman said.

In Hebron, where 500 Jewish settlers live protected by Israeli forces in a city of around 200,000 Palestinians, the expansion of the Jewish enclave is a fiercely contested matter.

Palestinian attackers have killed 25 Israelis and wounded dozens more since mid-September in stabbings, shootings and vehicular assaults.

Thirteen-year-old Ruqayya Eid Abu Eid, originally from the village of Yatta south of Hebron, was shot dead earlier on Saturday by an Israeli security guard after allegedly trying to stab him near the illegal settlement of Anatot.

A 13-year-old Palestinian girl who attempted to stab an Israeli security guard has been shot dead in the West Bank.

“The moment that the purchase process is authorised, we will allow the population of the two houses in Hebron”, Netanyahu said, confirming his aide’s remarks. Israel recently passed a law authorising troops to shoot stone-throwing Palestinian protesters.

The same month in the east Jerusalem settlement of Pisgat Zeev, two Palestinian boys aged 12 and 14 attacked a security guard with knives, police said.

More than 180 people have been killed – 155 of them Palestinians.

Israel occupied the West Bank during the 1967 Mideast War and has been controlling it ever since in a move condemned by the worldwide community.

“In the case of the homes in Hebron, the law was brazenly broken”.

Jewish Home party leader Bennett called on Netanyahu to implement an article in the Likud-Jewish Home coalition agreement mandating a cabinet committee to deal with settlement and housing issues in the West Bank, as a number of coalition lawmakers threatened to rebel in upcoming votes to protest the evacuation.

“I didn’t see her when she left so I expected she had gone to her father”.

Israeli officials reacted furiously, saying that Wallstrom was no longer welcome in Israel, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described her remarks as “outrageous”, “immoral” and “stupid”.

The tensions have also been escalated by the repeated desecration of the compound by extremist Israeli settlers, who are usually accompanied by Israeli military forces.