Israel policies create West Bank 'ghost town': rights group

"The policy of separation founded on ethnic criteria (between Jews and Arabs) has caused a massive exodus of Palestinians from Hebron's city centre," the report by B'Tselem said.

"Israeli activities have been carried out on the basis of a preferential policy toward settlers that has turned the centre of Hebron into a ghost town."

Hebron, long a flashpoint between Palestinians and Israelis, was traditionally the commercial centre for the entire southern West Bank.

But, said B'Tselem, Israeli authorities "have made the entire Palestinian population pay the price for protecting Israeli settlement in the city (by creating) legal and physical segregation between the Israeli settlers and the Palestinian majority."

It said that more than 1,000 housing units or 41.9 percent of the total have been vacated by their occupants, 659 since the second Palestinian intifada or uprising started in September 2000.

In addition, 1,829 businesses or 76.6 percent of those in the centre of Hebron have also been abandoned, and 440 have been ordered closed by the army, it said.

Palestinian foot and car traffic on main roads in the town centre is prohibited and the authorities turn a blind eye to settler attacks, including beatings, poisoning a water well and the cutting down of trees, it said.

The Jewish Community of Hebron issued a statement denouncing the report as "an unbroken string of lies, distortions and concealment of data" and slamming B'Tselem as "a mouthpiece for Palestinian propaganda."

Under an agreement with the Palestinian Authority, Israel evacuated 80 percent of Hebron in 1997, leaving a settlement of several hundred Jewish settlers, protected by its soldiers, around the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site holy to both Jews and Muslims.

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