15 Jewish Settler Families Move Into Disputed Hebron Building
JERUSALEM (JTA) — At least 15 Jewish families moved into a three-story West Bank building whose ownership is in dispute.
The ownership of the Hebron building, which is next to the Cave of the Patriarchs and known as the Machpelah House, is under appeal.
The Israeli army’s Civil Administration, which had given the settlers permission to purchase the building, ruled earlier this month that copies of the ownership documents are as good as the originals. The issue has been sent back to the military’s Registration Committee.
A group of settlers claims it purchased the house from its Palestinian owners five years ago; the previous owners now deny the claim.
Israeli soldiers and Border Police surrounded the structure on Tuesday night and were preventing others from entering the building.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO