Deadline Passes For Evacuating Disputed Hebron House

November 19, 2008 8:36 a.m. EST

(TML) - The deadline set by the Israeli High Court of Justice for Israeli squatters to evacuate a disputed house in Hebron expired on Wednesday.

The state can now, by law, force the dwellers to leave.

However, the Israeli Defense Ministry has no intention of evacuating them within the next coming days, Army Radio reported.

The battle over the disputed house began in early 2007 when hundreds of Jewish youth entered a Palestinian home in the West Bank city of Hebron, claiming they had legitimate ownership rights to the house.

The Palestinian landlord said the Jewish claims were false and that he could prove legal ownership of the house.

Since both sides claimed legal rights, the case was brought before the High Court of Justice to hand down a verdict. The court decided on Sunday that the house should be evacuated and would be placed temporarily in the possession of the state, until the legal ownership rights were clarified.

The court gave the dwellers three days to vacate the premises.

The judges ruled that if the dwellers would not leave the house voluntarily, they could be evacuated by force as illegal squatters.

The house is near the Cave of the Patriarchs, where the biblical patriarch Abraham is said to be buried with his wife Sarah. It is a venerated place for Jews and also holds importance for Jews and Christians.

The disputed house has become a new flashpoint in Hebron, home to both Palestinians and Israeli Jews, where the two parties frequently spar.

Meanwhile, the family living in the house is refusing to budge, and four other families have joined them in their protest.

Rabbi Zalman Melamed, a member of the Judea and Samaria rabbinical council, urged Israeli security personnel recruited for the evacuation mission to disobey orders.

"I'm calling on policemen, you should faint and not take part in the unjust expulsion of Jews from their homes," Melamed said at an emergency meeting on Tuesday.

"Policemen should tell their superiors, 'we were inducted to protect the law and not to unjustly expel Jews,'" he said.

Several Israel MPs from right-wing parties hinted on Tuesday that an attempt to evacuate the dwellers from the house would be met with violence.