Word: hebron
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...that Clinton's approach has left quite a chink in Obama's once seemingly invincible armor. At Clinton's events this week, Obama's troubles echoed through the crowd. "You'll never see Obama in a place like this," said Steve Batterman, a 28-year old machinist apprentice from Hebron, Ind., after a Hillary rally at a local fire station. Of course Batterman was mistaken. Obama travels to small, rural venues with some regularity. But the impression has been established, and is widespread among Clinton supporters. "He seems like he is too good for the common people...
...they've strayed too far into hostile territory. Every morning, I watch an Arab worker quicken his pace as he traverses to the Israeli side of my street. He lowers his eyes to the pavement to avoid trouble from Israeli cops who are frequently waiting there, checking IDs. On Hebron Road, he flags down a cramped, Arabs-only bus because if he boarded one of the big, air-conditioned Israeli ones, passengers might think he was a suicide bomber. For their part, Israelis avoid the Arab side of Abu Tor. A Jewish-American widow who lives in the apartment building...
...eviction itself went relatively smoothly, but the hard feelings it generated resound deep inside Israeli army barracks. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were initially assigned only to secondary tasks, such as manning roadblocks to stop religious Zionist sympathizers from joining their Hebron brethren. Still, when orders were given to the Duchifat Battalion to assist evicting the two settler families, 38 out of 400 soldiers initially refused to obey after many called their rabbis on cell phones. Eventually, all but eight relented. These "refuseniks," as they were dubbed in the Israeli press, were slapped in the army prison...
Without the army, the Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory could not exist. The IDF guards the roads leading to the settlements. The senior army commanders consult on a weekly basis with the settlers' council on possible security risks coming from Palestinian militants. In Hebron, where over 500 troops protect the city's settler families, the boundaries between soldier and settler are even more blurred than elsewhere. Six settler families actually live inside a Hebron army outpost, and their illegal presence is tolerated. Officers routinely arrange for a settler to lecture troops on the significance of Hebron to Jewish history, advocating...
Given the Israelis' displeasure with Olmert's policy of disengagement from the Palestinian territories, it was not surprising that a poll taken by Ha'aretz after the Hebron skirmish found that 32% of Israelis think the refuseniks were justified in disobeying orders. For Olmert the answer is thus not just a simple equation of troops versus settlers. He must also factor in the rising numbers within the army ranks who are in no mood to evict fellow Jews from Arab territories and the sizable portion of the public that supports that sentiment. Any way you look at it, it adds...