Tel Aviv - The tense, violent standoff surrounding a disputed house in Hebron underscores once again the problems Israel faces as it grapples with radical and radicalised settlers who are increasingly rejecting the authority of the state. The settlers have taken over a house in the divided southern West Bank city, vowing to defy any attempt by the military to remove them from the structure, whose ownership is disputed.
In the meantime, while the military hesitates in carrying out a court order to evacuate the building, the settlers themselves - who number around 1,500 - are clashing violently with local Palestinians and are eliciting criticism even from some of their own leaders.
They rioted Tuesday, throwing rocks at Palestinians and at Israeli police and soldiers, spray-painted slogans and damaged Muslim graves.
Local Palestinians also hurled stones at the settlers, seriously injuring an Israeli teenager who was hit in the head.
Dozens more were lightly injured, with Palestinians reporting at least 36 wounded and settlers some 18.
And the evacuation is not even under way yet.
The settlers occupied the house in early 2007, saying they were the tenants of an American Jew who purchased it and that they have documents proving it. Its Palestinian owner however denies this.
The Israeli supreme court in its November 16 ordered the house be handed over to the state until a lower court rules on its rightful ownership.
Since then hundreds of hardline and radical Israelis have arrived at the house as "reinforcements," vowing to prevent the evacuation. Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak in turn has vowed not to bow to the threats and carry out the court order at an unexpected time.
So far, however, the standoff has continued, although Israel did on Tuesday belatedly declare Hebron "a closed military zone," in an attempt to prevent more radical settlers from reaching the disputed house.
Settler leaders, some of whom have condemned the rioting, say the violence is spurred by others who arrive from settlements elsewhere in the West Bank, although hard-core settlers in Hebron have their own reputation for extremism.
Legislator Ariyeh Eldad, normally a champion of Israeli settlement in the West Bank, told Israel Army Radio Wednesday that the settler youth barricaded in the Hebron house "is a different youth, this is youth that has no God, no rabbis and no leaders."
Another settler leader, Danny Dayan, called on the military to remove from Hebron Daniella Weiss, a firebrand settler leader, who he said was inciting the Hebron demonstrators and "is responsible for the events of the past few days."
Israeli defence officials fear that the settlers in the Hebron house are trying to provoke the Palestinians, in the hope that a large-scale Palestinian protest would divert the army, and leave them to occupy the building unhindered.
A speedy evacuation could prevent this scenario, but could then see the settlers turn their anger on the soldiers and police come to remove them.
Much as been made of the fact that many of the more violent settler youth are even more radicalised than the elder generation, and certainly more extreme than many other settlers who live where they do more for economic reasons than out of pure ideology.
The radicals, having been born and raised in settlements, see resisting evacuation as fighting for their homes, in addition to protecting what they see as the Jews right to settle their Biblical homeland.
The situation in Hebron is in fact similar to that in another location, Amona, near Ramallah, which was evacuated in 2006. Then too, as rumours of the impending evacuation circulated, settler youth flocked to the site, and clashed violently with police and soldiers come to remove them.
And Amona was "merely" an unauthorised settlement outpost. It was not located, like the House of Contention is, in one of the four holiest cities in Judaism, which houses the tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs, (itself also a Muslim shrine, and the source of no little friction over the years.)
Although Israel has said it intends, or at the very least hopes, to keep hold of large blocks of settlements in any future peace treaty with the Palestinians, it will also have to evacuate others.
The standoff in Hebron - settlers versus Palestinians, with the army in the middle waiting for orders - may be a harbinger of what to expect when it does.
