World gone mad

I've been watching events unfold in Hebron with my eyes popping, and tonight I think the nadir was reached. The headline in Ha'aretz currently reads 'Jewish Hebron areas are a closed military zone'.

The situation in Hebron has the potential to divide Israel, much much more than the Gaza pullout ever did. This isn't one of those hilltop settlements with football-pitch lights; this is a real town, there are no tall walls separating the Jewish contingent from their Arab neighbours there, just a fence that can be broken down. Drive-by shootings are common in the area, but still the religious choose to live there. Why? Because it's somewhere Jews have lived forever; the Tomb of the Patriarchs is in Hebron, the field that Abraham bought so that he could bury Sarah. It's the ancient capital of Israel, the city David ruled from before taking Jebus and re-naming it Jerusalem. The souk that the IDF are trying to evacuate now is Jewish-owned, and has been for the last 200 years. The property legally belongs to the people who are living in it. Even the local Arabs don't dispute that claim.

I don't think anyone likes witnessing the stone-throwing, looting and house-burning antics of the last few days. That's mob behaviour. But it's not the community that are the mob here - it's the crowds who arrived from other areas to offer their support. The locals there say that when that Arab-owned house was set alight, their own people put the fire out. The community leaders appealed to the supporters to stop the violence, and it appears they actually have. Possibly too late; the damage is done and the press, both within and beyond Israel, is terrible.

In the meantime, the local Magistrate's Court have issued an injunction against the evacuation of three of the affected stores, which is an interesting turn of events. It's just as inexplicable as everything else in this mixed-up story. I mean, you can understand why Olmert would want to carry on in Sharon's boots, but could you really see Sharon evacuating Jews from Jewish-owned property in a place of such religious significance? Because I couldn't, and can't.

It seems to me that, assuming this evacuation goes ahead, every single settlement and Jewish area in the West Bank anticipating a relatively secure future will be forced to recognise that that future is gone. Where to from there?