By ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: June 5, 2007
HEBRON, West Bank, June 5 — Conflicting ideologies and internal divisions came to the forefront today as Israelis and Palestinians marked the 40th anniversary of the start of the Six-Day War in June 1967.
Israeli peace advocates protested against four decades of occupation in Hebron, a tense and conservative Palestinian city with a biblical past, and tried to drown out a small counterdemonstration of local Jewish settlers with their chants. ...
Close to 300 Israeli anti-occupation protesters from the Peace Now movement arrived here this morning in bullet-proof buses, with an army escort, and took up position at one end of a dusty parking lot below the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a shrine holy to both Jews and Muslims. They shouted “Hebron settlers, a bone in the throat,” and other slogans that rhymed in Hebrew calling for their removal, while about 30 settlers demonstrated behind police barricades at the other end of the lot. Scores of police and security forces separated the two.
Israel’s military authorities had at first refused Peace Now permission to demonstrate in Hebron, arguing that it could lead to disturbances by the settlers that might endanger the lives of the demonstrators, as well as the police and soldiers protecting them. A High Court judge overturned the army ruling on Monday.
“We were limited to 150 people, but we brought double,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, the secretary general of Peace Now. “To us, that’s a success.”
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