This article was originally published by the Ma'an News Agency and is republished with permission.

Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian man during clashes near a settler-occupied house in the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron. Hundreds of settler supporters came to try to prevent the evacuation of the occupied building, where they rioted, injuring many Palestinians and destroying their homes and property. (Mamoun Wazwaz, Maan Images)

"They were deeply involved. It was obvious." This is how Jamal Abu Sa'ifan described the role of the Israeli police and military forces during the settler riots in the aftermath of their evacuation from the "House of Contention" last Thursday.

Abu Sa'ifan filmed the now-famous footage of an Israeli settler shooting two of his relatives during the riots.

His account of Thursday's violence suggests that not only did Israeli forces fail to prevent the settlers' violent and apparently nationalistically-motivated attack on the local population, but in fact facilitated these attacks.

By Sunday, even the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, had labeled what took place on Thursday a "pogrom" against Palestinians.

On the day that Hebron was set on fire by settlers, however, Olmert released a statement praising his military for a "quick and efficient evacuation."

Olmert also pledged on Thursday that "any attempt by violent elements to attack the Palestinian population and cause unrest in Judea and Samaria [Israel's term for the West Bank] will be met with a sharp and immediate response by the security establishment."

According to witnesses, the response of the Israeli troops in Hebron was neither sharp nor immediate. On the contrary, the soldiers actively enabled the settlers in their attacks. The testimony of Palestinians present in Hebron during the riots suggests that Israeli forces in the area were negligent in their failure to stop what now appears to be a coordinated assault on the civilian residents of the neighborhood.

"When they pulled the settlers out of the house, a large number of settlers came down. I was filming them. I went down to my uncle's house, where settlers shot my cousin and my uncle," said Abu Sa'ifan.

"Five minutes later, when my relatives were taken to the hospital, the army came and took all the young men in the area and put them in one house in the valley," he said. "Then the settlers came and set the fires. They doused palm leaves in gasoline and set fire to them in piles."

Related stories Will he meet the challenge? Hebron settlers take their fight into Israel Spy tactics 'Our family has died' Next to occupied Hebron home, Palestinian neighbors live in fear

Abu Sa'ifan's house abuts the Kiryat Arba settlement, home to some 7,000 Israeli Jews. Following the evacuation, masked settlers jumped down from the settlement on to the roof of his house, smashing the family's water tanks, solar panels, and satellite dish, while most of them took shelter inside. The settlers smashed windows, rained stones on the house, attacked Palestinians with clubs and occasionally shot with firearms.

Still imprisoned in one house, the young Palestinian men of the neighborhood were unable to put out the fires or confront the rampaging settlers. The Israeli soldiers and police in the area just stood by during the rampage.

After attacking Abu Sa'ifan's house, the settlers "continued to attack house after house; they tried to burn four or five other houses. Also, they destroyed their water tanks and solar panels." In other words, the settler mob acted systematically, assaulting every Palestinian dwelling in the neighborhood.

Meanwhile, settlers violence erupted across the city. The riots took place where expected, in the militant settler enclaves in Tel Rumeida and Hebron's old souq (market), half of which has been shut down by the Israeli military.

Violence also took place where it usually does not - settlers poured out of the Israeli-controlled "H2" zone and into the center of metropolitan Hebron, smashing cars, hurling stones, and setting houses ablaze. At that time, witnesses said, the newly deployed Palestinian security forces vanished from the streets.

When Ma'an's reporter and photographer visited Abu Sa'ifan on Saturday, piles of half-burned debris lay around his modest concrete house. The windows were broken. A plastic bottle of gasoline with Hebrew writing had been discarded in the yard. Above the house, settlers peered down through the fence from Kiryat Arba as if observing animals in a zoo.

Thursday's riots were the culmination of two weeks of violence. Abu Sa'ifan said he and the 25 members of his family living in the houses bordering Kiryat Arba have not had a good night's rest in 15 days.

Abu Sa'ifan's house was just a target of the "price-tag" campaign settler groups had announced weeks in advance of the evacuation. The premise was simple: if the Israeli state evacuates just one building containing 250 of the nearly half a million settlers in the West Bank, the settler movement will "exact a price" from the state through acts of violence, as seen in the rampaging through Hebron and other points in the West Bank in recent days.

When Israeli border police and soldiers in riot gear surprised the settlers occupying the Rajabi family house, only a handful were arrested. The rest of the 250 right-wing Israelis were then turned loose and set their rage upon the Palestinians in the neighborhood.

Why were the settlers not detained or otherwise separated from the Palestinians in the area? Surely, after weeks of escalating and increasing mobilization on the part of settler groups, the government must have foreseen the carnage.

When asked this question, officers in the Israeli military Spokesperson's office claimed that the Israeli police had made the decision. Asked the same question, police Spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld claimed said that it had been the decision of the military not to arrest the settlers. The aim of the evacuation had been to remove the settlers "quickly and with minimum injuries... we accomplished that mission," he said.

Later the military Spokesperson submitted this answer: "The IDF, the Israel Police and the Border Police did the maximum to prevent and contain the riots. Arrests were carried out on the scene before, during and after the removal of the settlers. The majority of the rioters were dispersed."

"It should be noted that the evacuation was completed in less than an hour," the Spokesperson added.

Yet many unanswered questions still remain. Ten days earlier, settlers had cut through the fence separating them from the Palestinians in the Wadi Hussein neighborhood. When the eviction finally took place, weeks after the order from the High Court, the fence was still gaping open, allowing settlers to leap from above onto the defenseless Palestinian houses.

Other questions may never be answered. Why did the Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, wait more than two weeks before implementing the court order, allowing the settlers time to prepare? Why were the consciences of the extra 600 Israeli troops deployed for the eviction not stirred by the sight of Jews systematically attacking people for their ethnicity?

The Israeli state, meanwhile, secured the publicity it sought, despite the riots. The drama communicated to the world is that of the Israeli state boldly confronting its extremists, with little attention being devoted to the pogrom directly caused by the eviction.

What is not mentioned is that the entire conflagration over the "House of Contention" was created by Israel, beginning with the state's acceptance of the militant settler enclaves throughout Hebron, and ending with the very details of how the evacuation was carried out.