On 4 December, immediately after the settlement in Hebron’s a-Ras neighborhood (“the House in Dispute”) was evicted, B'Tselem issued a public call to security forces to protect the Palestinian residents of the city, and Palestinians throughout the West Bank, from expected acts of revenge by settlers.
In the weeks that preceded the eviction, settlers attacked Palestinians and damaged Palestinian property daily in Hebron. Although these attacks were extensive and prolonged, Israel’s security forces failed to prevent them. In one of the incidents that B'Tselem documented, on 30 November, about 50 settlers entered a Palestinian neighborhood at 2:00 A.M., accompanied by an army jeep. The settlers threw stones that shattered windowpanes of houses and of some 25 cars, and punctured the tires of the cars. They then threw stones at houses in the neighborhood and shattered windowpanes.
Despite B'Tselem’s warning, and despite the high probability that attacks of this kind would occur, the security forces failed to properly protect the city’s Palestinian residents also after the eviction, when settlers invaded Palestinian neighborhoods in the city, torched houses and cars, threw stones, shattered windowpanes, and damaged solar-heated water tanks, satellite dishes, and water containers.
A particularly severe attack occurred in Hebron’s Wadi al-Hussein neighborhood, by the house of the al-Matariyeh and Abu Sa’ifan families. Jamal Abu-Sa'ifan, a participant in B'Tselem's camera distribution project, filmed the event:
B'Tselem - Settler violence - 10 Dec. '08: Hebron: Willful abandonment by security forces
