News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) On Tuesday, 3,000 Israel Defense Force soldiers are scheduled to expel two Jewish families, including 14 children, from an abandoned marketplace in Hebron, adjacent to the Avraham Avinu complex.

Representatives of the Jewish community of Hebron assert that they voluntary left the marketplace a year and a half ago, after reaching an agreement with the army, that they would be allowed to return in the future.

Attorney for the Hebron Jewish community, former justice minister Yaakov Neeman, in an appeal to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, argued that the marketplace was owned by Jews and had been operated by them prior to the 1929 Hebron massacre that destroyed the Jewish community.

Neeman stated that it was “illogical to ask Jewish families to leave property that was owned by Jews, in the name of an empty marketplace that had not been operational for 13 years, and for which there was no plan to release to Palestinian merchants.”