The Israeli prime minister has intervened to prevent the eviction of hardline Jewish settlers from a house in the tense West Bank city of Hebron, despite a Palestinian family‘s insistence that they are the legal owners of the property.

Binyamin Netanyahu overruled his defence minister Ehud Barak, who had ordered the eviction of scores of settlers from the property on the grounds that they had not secured a permit for purchase from the Israeli authorities in the West Bank.