When Is A Legal Purchase Not Counted As Such?

Last week, Israeli police evicted 15 Jews from a house in Hebron, a house the Jews claimed they had purchased legally. The Hebron police chief claimed there was no evidence the house was sold to them.

Israeli police evicted 15 Jewish settlers from a an illegally occupied house in the restive West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday following a weeklong showdown between the settler community and Israel’s Defense Ministry, which administers the occupied territory.

“We are determined to make sure that the rule of law and the authority of the state of Israel over all its citizens will be assured. When there is a violation, it will be put back to track,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told reporters shortly after the operation and explained that “the house was taken over by citizens against the law.”

The men, women and children were removed without any violent resistance, police said.

About two dozen settlers moved into the Hebron house in the middle of the night last Thursday, claiming they had legally purchased it from a Palestinian man.

But Palestinian authorities, including Hebron police Chief Ramadan Awad, disputed that the purchase was made legally.

“Our investigation shows no evidence that the house was sold to settlers by Palestinians,” Awad told CNN.

But the following Ma’an news report contradicts this assertion.,  

A Palestinian man suspected of selling property to Israeli settlers in Hebron has been detained by the national security forces in connection to a building evacuated by Israeli forces on Wednesday.

Israeli police evicted 15 settlers in the two-story structure near the Old City which they said they had bought from a Palestinian.

Security officials say the man — identified only by his initials, M.S. — originally from the Gaza Strip was involved in the effort to make the transaction, which would have been invalid under Palestinian law.

A standoff over the issue caused divisions within Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mainly right-wing cabinet, where Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leader of a centrist party, had pushed for eviction.

Netanyahu had asked Barak to give the settlers more time so they could present legal evidence of their claim to ownership of the building, which has been disputed by Palestinian authorities.

The settlers had sought to expand an illegal settlement of some 500 Israelis in the heart of Hebron, a city that is home to about 250,000 Palestinians and the site of a shrine holy to both sides.

Netanyahu has faced questions within his Likud party and other right-wing coalition partners about his commitment to the settlers, many of whom see themselves as exercising a Jewish birthright to biblical land.

In the aftermath of the raid on Wednesday, Netanyahu moved to approve more outposts retroactively, raising speculation he was trying to mollify settler leaders angered by the eviction.

About 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas which, along with the Gaza Strip, were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Settlements are illegal under international law.

If there was no evidence of a palestinian selling to Jews, why did the Ma’an news report speak of a palestinian man suspected of doing just that? Furthermore, the report seems to be suggesting that Jews buying houses from palestinians constitutes settlement activity, illegal under international law. But since when is a legal transaction illegal, just by virtue of the fact the purchasers were Jews? I would have thought ethnic cleansing – even of Jews – was the illegal act here.

Update: In this earlier Jerusalem Post report, PA security officials deny a palestinian was arrested for questioning. If this is truly the case, why would the palestinian Ma’an news agency quote palestinian security officials saying the opposite?