Word: arba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...military curfew did not include the 4,000 Jewish settlers of Qiryat Arba, on the outskirts of Hebron. Following the funeral of one of the attack victims, gangs of Jewish settlers, many carrying automatic weapons, rampaged through Hebron, firing into the air, smashing windows in homes and cars owned by Arabs, and attempting to break into stores. Israeli soldiers on the scene made only intermittent attempts to curb the violence...
Even some Israelis blamed the Begin government's settlements policy for igniting the troubles. Earlier this year, Begin's Cabinet approved the construction of Jewish settlements in major Arab urban centers such as Hebron. For more than a year, squatters from Qiryat Arba have illegally occupied the former Hadassah clinic in Hebron, where the attack took place. Israel's former Army Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev, who is now secretary-general of the opposition Labor Party, argued in the Knesset last week that the Hebron attack would never have occurred if Begin's government...
Hebron itself-and the occupied Hadassah clinic, in particular-has lately become the unhappy focus of Israel's controversial settlements policy. Relations between the city's 50,000 Arabs and the 4,000 Jews in the nearby settlement of Qiryat Arba took a turn for the worse after militant followers of Rabbi Moshe Levinger took over the Hadassah clinic in 1979. Levinger, a zealot who advocates the "divine right" of Jews to settle anywhere in territory that belonged to biblical Israel, used the squatters' presence in the old Jewish quarter to pressure the government of Premier Menachem...
...fact, settlers from Qiryat Arba regularly intimidate Arab residents of Hebron, secure in the knowledge that the government will not crack down on them. Scarcely a week passes without some incident of vandalism or vigilantism. Grape vines of Arab villagers are cut. The tires of Arab-owned vehicles are slashed and windows smashed. Gun-wielding Israelis invade the houses of Hebron residents, threatening and terrorizing them. At the Haram al-Khalil Mosque, built on the site where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are believed to have been buried, Jews disrupt the prayers of devout Muslims...
...they were targeted. "We enjoyed good neighborly relations," says Abdel Idris, "but after the murder of the Israeli youth, we were told again and again, 'If you won't leave your home, we shall beat you up.' " Counters Zeev Friedman, the newly elected head of Qiryat Arba, who lives only 250 yds. away: "This is part of a struggle between two families-Jews and Arabs. We cannot accept an attack on us without a response...