divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/6401?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Israeli+riot+police+evict+settlers+in+Hebronch=World+newsc3=The+Guardianc4=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territories+%28News%29%2CMiddle+East+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Rory+McCarthyc7=2008_12_05c8=1129174c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territoriesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FIsrael+and+the+Palestinian+territories" width="1" height="1" //divpRiot police forcibly evacuated a house filled with dozens of Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday in the most public showdown between the government and the increasingly violent settler movement for more than two years./ppHundreds of police mounted a surprise raid on the three-storey house, which had become the latest symbol of defiance for Israeli settlers. Troops fired teargas into the crowds and dragged settlers from the house one by one. Around 30 people were injured, including one policeman who had acid thrown in his eyes./ppAlthough the house was emptied within an hour, the operation triggered broad settler protests across the occupied West Bank and in Jerusalem that continued into the night. In Hebron, masked settlers set Palestinian trees ablaze and attacked buildings. The Israeli military declared the southern West Bank a closed military zone, setting up roadblocks to prevent more settlers descending on the city./ppThe building, dubbed the House of Peace by the settlers and the House of Contention by the Israeli press, was home to 15 settler families, but their numbers had swelled as supporters poured in. Earlier this week there were riots between the settlers and Palestinians which left several people hurt on both sides. Settlers daubed a black Star of David on several graves in a nearby Palestinian cemetery as well as the word "revenge" on a Palestinian house. /ppYesterday morning the house was full mostly of young people, sitting on the cold concrete floors, praying in the hallways or playing football in the road outside. One poster read: "This land is our land."/ppThe settlers claim they bought the house nearly two years ago from a Palestinian for just short of $1m (pound;670,000) and said they had documents and videotape as proof. However, the Palestinian has since denied selling the building to the settlers. Last month, the Israeli supreme court said the house should be evacuated until the ownership dispute was settled./ppJust minutes before the raid, Nadia Matar, a prominent settler figure who had spent the past week living in the house, defended the project. "They were able to do what we have been doing since the beginning of Jewish history: to live in the land of Israel, to purchase land like Abraham did," she said. /ppThe house sits just outside the large Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba and, Matar said, was a strategic asset that linked the settlement to the centre of Hebron, the burial place of the patriarch Abraham./ppLike most in the house, she believes Israel has a biblical right to take all the land between the Mediterranean sea and the River Jordan. All Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are illegal under international law./ppMatar was one of the last to be dragged from the building and as she crouched in the dirt after being deposited by the four policemen who carried her out, she said: "Shame on the government for using all this force against us."/ppRuth Hizmi was one of the first to rent an apartment in the house and she lived there with four of her children. Her flat had bare concrete walls and floor, with electricity cables stretching across the ceiling and sheets of cloth dividing the bedrooms. /pp"We are citizens who are holding on to our country, the only country we have and they are giving it away. They are throwing Jews out of their homes," she said, just hours before the raid. /ppWhen the police arrived Hizmi was out collecting children from school but quickly returned, forced her way through rows of police and briefly back into the house before she too was carried out. /ppPolice will now occupy the building and prevent the settlers returning./ppFor the settlers, holding on to the house was also an act of defiance against the Yesha council, the traditional settler leadership, which has lost support among a younger, more hardline generation, particularly after Israel removed its settlers from Gaza three years ago. /ppHowever, there has been growing antipathy to the settlers within Israel itself. Yesterday, the left-leaning Ha'aretz newspaper described their actions in Hebron this week as "Jewish terrorism"./ph2Clashes/h2pstrongHebron/strong is the second largest and most contentious city in the occupied strongWest Bank/strong. It is home to about strong600 Jewish settlers /strongand strong170,000 Palestinians/strong. The settlers arrived just after the strong1967 war /strongand are protected by the Israeli military. They insist on a biblical right to live in the city - the burial place of the strongpatriarch Abraham/strong. As a result, strongPalestinians/strong are kept out of the city centre and their strongshops/strong strongclosed/strong, leaving the old commercial heart deserted. The city frequently witnesses strongviolent clashes./strong/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israelandthepalestinians"Israel and the Palestinian territories/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middleeast"Middle East/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/z7eLKqOoFLkEtVP8cPhow9jjFoI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/z7eLKqOoFLkEtVP8cPhow9jjFoI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/60409?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Israeli+forces+evict+settlers+from+disputed+Hebron+homech=World+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territories+%28News%29%2CWorld+newsc5=Not+commercially+usefulc6=Rory+McCarthy%2CPeter+Walkerc7=2008_12_04c8=1128924c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territoriesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FIsrael+and+the+Palestinian+territories" width="1" height="1" //divpIsraeli riot police today dragged hundreds of militant Jewish settlers from a disputed house in the city of Hebron, in the first major such eviction on the West Bank for more than two years./ppSecurity forces used teargas as they surrounded the three-storey property set on a hillside in a Palestinian district of Hebron. The settlers responded by throwing rocks and eggs./ppIt took the police about an hour to carry the more than 200 settlers from the house, each dragged away by teams of four officers. Around 20 people were injured, ambulance staff said, although most were not seriously hurt./ppThe house, located near the Jewish settler community of Kiryat Arba, has become an important symbol for settler groups since around a dozen families occupied it in March 2007. Such groups believe all occupied Palestinian territories should be subsumed into a greater Israel./ppThe families said they bought it legally from the Palestinian owner, who denied the claim. Israel's supreme court ordered last month that the house should be cleared./ppSince then, many other settlers have come to live in the home, covered with posters in Hebrew displaying slogans including "This land is our land" and "Human rights for Jews in Hebron"./ppThe mayor of Kiryat Arba, Malichi Levinger, warned that the families would attempt to return. "I think we come back to this house. That is our goal for now," he said./ppNadia Matar, one of the leaders of those inside the house, who was among the last dragged out, said: "Shame on the government for using this force against us."/ppToday's action was the first major West Bank evacuation since Israeli security forces cleared parts of the Amona settlement in February 2006. Dozens of people were injured when riot police battled settlers./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israelandthepalestinians"Israel and the Palestinian territories/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/EaIZ3h00lNwwFLACDx_jIJMnP_c/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/EaIZ3h00lNwwFLACDx_jIJMnP_c/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Israel says it will allow some humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, easing the blockade of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.

By Nicola Nasser* Failing to substantiate for the President of the autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, a credible “legal” basis to extend his term from the Basic Law, which is the constitutional terms of reference that govern the rotation of power and the (...)

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/74407?ns=guardianpageName=World+news%3A+Cluster+bomb+treaty%3A+Signing+begins+to+bring+ban+on+productionch=World+newsc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territories+%28News%29%2CMiddle+East+%28News%29%2CDefence+policy%2CPolitics%2CWorld+newsc5=Policy+Society%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Richard+Norton-Taylor%2CPeter+Walkerc7=2008_12_03c8=1128081c9=articlec10=GUc11=World+newsc12=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territoriesc13=c14=h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FIsrael+and+the+Palestinian+territories" width="1" height="1" //divpGovernments from around the world today began signing an international convention banning the production of cluster bombs – unexploded canisters that have killed and maimed thousands of civilians and remain scattered dozen of countries./ppAt the Oslo signing ceremony, Norway, which has led the efforts to ban cluster munitions, was the first country to sign. It was followed by Laos – where cluster bombs dropped by US planes more than 30 years ago a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/03/laos-cluster-bombs-uxo-deaths"are still killing civilians/a, and Lebanon, another country affected by the weapons./ppBy the end of tomorrow, around 100 of the United Nations' 192 members will have signed up. Once 30 countries have ratified the convention, it will become part of international humanitarian law./ppThere will, however, be a number of notable absentees, including the US, China, Russia, India and Pakistan as well as Israel, which fired many cluster bombs during the 2006 Lebanon war. /ppCampaigners hope the treaty might help change global attitudes towards the munitions, as a 1997 treaty did on land mines, prompting some nations to sign up later./ppIntended primarily as anti-personnel weapons, cluster bombs open up in mid air to release dozens of individual devices, known as bomblets, which scatter across a wide area./ppWhile the bomblets are intended to explode when they hit the ground, many do not and can lie dormant for years. Victims often include farmers tilling land and children, attracted by the bomblets' bright colouring./ppThe US and other nations insist cluster bombs have a legitimate military use. One group that deals with the issue, Handicap International, says 98% of cluster-bomb victims are civilians and 27% are children./ppThe convention has been enthusiastically welcomed by the Red Cross, and a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/02/weaponstechnology-armstrade"on the guardian.co.uk/a by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, his German counterpart./ppThe weapons had "rendered huge tracts of land unusable, cutting farmers off from their crops and visiting further suffering on families forced to risk their lives simply to pursue their livelihoods", said Matthias Schmale, international director of the British Red Cross./ppMiliband and Steinmeier said their goal was a "truly global treaty on cluster munitions", while noting that "many of the major users, producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions" had not yet agreed to sign it./ppDuring the 34-day Lebanon war in 2006, up to a million devices failed to explode and this summer more than 40.6m square metres were identified as still being contaminated, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. More than 200 civilians died in the year after the Lebanon ceasefire. Cluster bombs also caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system./ppAt least 75 countries currently stockpile cluster munitions. More than 30 have produced the weapons. Unexploded cluster bombs have also killed civilians in Afghanistan, Chad, Eritrea, Chechnya, Sierra Leone and Vietnam./ppDespite initial misgivings within the military, Britain, which fired Israeli-made cluster bombs in its attack on Basra in 2003 and had been the third biggest user of cluster bombs after the US and Israel, has agreed to get rid of its stockpiles of land-fired and air-launched cluster weapons. British diplomats are trying to persuade the US to get rid of stockpiles at its bases in the UK, officials said yesterday./ppToday's convention excludes weapons that fire fewer than 10 explosive submunitions designed to locate a "single target"./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israelandthepalestinians"Israel and the Palestinian territories/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middleeast"Middle East/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/defence"Defence policy/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Pv0_3CgGT7A_RxYi5FNqpi1sfdY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Pv0_3CgGT7A_RxYi5FNqpi1sfdY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p