RAMALLAH/JERUSALEM, 21 March 2007 — The presence of Jewish settlers inside the West Bank city of Hebron has created an “unbearable situation” for Israel and the Palestinians, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said yesterday. He was speaking a day after settlers took over a building under construction in Hebron, saying they had bought it.

A local Palestinian family disputed the ownership claim, saying it had purchased the windowless, three-story structure from a Palestinian living in Jordan. Peres told Israel’s Army Radio the settlers should be evicted if they had acted unlawfully, but said a solution was needed in any case to the problem in Hebron.

About 200 Jewish settlers were occupying the house. A large Israeli force of police and soldiers was surrounding the building on a road linking Hebron to the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba after the settlers moved in late Monday.

Peres said the settlement of Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of Hebron had been built so that a Jewish community would be living alongside, rather than within, a Palestinian community. “It is very hard to have both at the same time,” he said. Asked directly if he thought Israel should retain Kiryat Arba but move settlers out of Hebron itself, Peres said he did not want to stir up the subject now, but added: “The current situation is unbearable and it is absolutely clear to me that we must find a solution, and a quick one, and at this stage to uphold the law.”

Israeli Parliament’s member Ophir Pines-Paz of Labor called on Defense Minister Amir Peretz to immediately work to evacuate the settlers who raided the Hebron house, until a decision is made on its rightful owners. “It’s time for the defense minister to start working and stop making statements which mean nothing.

Left-wing organizations B’Tselem and Peace Now have slammed the settlers for taking over the house, which is located in a Palestinian neighborhood between Kiryat Arba settlement and the Al Ibrahimi Mosque in the center of Hebron. Abed Al-Hadi Chankash, member of Palestinian committee for the protection of homes and land in Hebron said that the settlers actions in Hebron were a daily reality and that “the Israeli government was lying to itself and its people in the face of the actions of the settlers and the IOF in the West Bank, and particularly in Hebron.”

Mayor of Halhoul, Ziad Abu Yousif, said that “the demolition of the house is a terrorist act” and he confirmed that such acts will escalate mutual violence between citizens and Israeli settlers.

He also said “the Israeli Occupation Forces handed the owners of six houses in Halhul notifications that their houses will be demolished claiming that the houses were in area C, which is under the Israeli security supervision.”

Air raid sirens blared yesterday and thousands of security and emergency personnel simulated an array of unconventional and rocket attacks to demonstrate lessons learned from last summer’s much-criticized war with Lebanese guerrillas. In the course of the two-day drill, police, soldiers and rescue crews were to respond to simulated assaults on seven different locations.

In an unexpected twist, the exercise was briefly suspended after security forces alerted that a real attack might be under way on a major highway near Tel Aviv. Police stopped one car on the road and arrested three passengers, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Bomb disposal experts searched the vehicle for explosive devices, but turned up nothing in their initial inspection, Rosenfeld said.

Critics have said the army and home front command did not do enough to protect northern Israel from the nearly 4,000 rockets that Hezbollah guerrillas rained on the area during the war.