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Settlers attack shop of freed Palestinian prisoner in Hebron

Arab World Materials 20 November 2011 17:42 (UTC +04:00)
Dozens of Jewish settlers attacked a shop in the West Bank belonging to a Palestinian freed as part of a prisoner swap deal last month, locals said Sunday, dpa reported.
Settlers attack shop of freed Palestinian prisoner in Hebron

Dozens of Jewish settlers attacked a shop in the West Bank belonging to a Palestinian freed as part of a prisoner swap deal last month, locals said Sunday, dpa reported.

The settlers threw objects and rocks at the shop in Hebron, according to Palestinian residents. Police intervened in clashes that broke out after the incident between Jewish settlers and Palestinian residents, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told dpa.

No one was reported injured in the clash that came as thousands of Jews arrived in Hebron to celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday.

An Israeli woman and a Palestinian man were questioned but later released, Rosenfeld said.

The owner of the shop, Hani Jaber, had been serving life in an Israeli prison for stabbing to death a student from an Israeli seminary in the nearby Jewish settlement of Qiryat Arba in 1993.

A radical Jewish group has vowed revenge for his release and put up posters offering a price on his life.

Radical Jews have condemned the prisoner exchange, under which Israel freed hundreds of jailed Palestinian militants in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza for over five years.

Some 800 radical Jewish settlers, protected by a heavy Israeli military presence, live in Hebron's historic centre among tens of thousands of Palestinians.

The city was divided into an Israeli and a Palestinian-controlled part under a 1997 agreement.

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