JERUSALEM, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- Israel said on Sunday that it plans to remove Israeli settlers from a contested house in the West Bank city of Hebron, to which they squatted last July.
Some 120 settlers currently occupy the building, since they illegally entered there on July 25.
The five-storey building is located in front of Hebron's flashpoint holy site, revered by Muslims as al-Ibrahimi Mosque and by Jews as the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
On Sunday, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit ruled that the settlers must be evicted because they are "unlawfully occupying" the building.
Mandelblit granted the military a week to negotiate on "a peaceful eviction" with the settlers. If the settlers disagree to leave the building, "the security forces would prepare for the eviction," he said.
The building has been at the center of years of legal battles over its ownership.
An Israeli company claimed it had purchased the site from a Palestinian but the Palestinians say the documents were forged.
The Registration Committee, appointed by Israel's Civil Administration in the occupied West Bank, has ruled that the company could not prove its ownership over the building.
Israel had planned to evacuate the building on July 23. However, a night before the scheduled eviction, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered to cancel it in the wake of a stabbing attack in Hebron.
"Those who try to uproot us from the City of the Patriarchs will achieve the opposite," he said in a statement.
According to Peace Now, an Israeli settlement watchdog, the settlers actually claim only partial ownership of the property and even if they eventually prove their ownership, "this does not represent sufficient cause for the establishment of a new settlement in the heart of the Palestinian city of Hebron."
The establishment of a new settlement at the site "will severely hinder Palestinian freedom of movement and add to the rising tensions in the area," the group said in a statement.
Hebron, one of the most tensed cities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, is home to some 200,000 Palestinians and a few hundred Jewish settlers who live there in a heavily guarded enclave.
The settlements are located on lands which Israel seized during the 1967 Middle East war. The international community has repeatedly condemned the settlements as a breach of international law and a hurdle to peace.
