JERUSALEM – Dozens of Israeli police in full riot gear stormed a Palestinian Arab house occupied by Jewish squatters in Hebron yesterday, as Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, gave a clear signal that his new government would not be cowed by West Bank settlers.

“In every case where the law is violated, we will respond without compromise, and we won’t reconcile ourselves to illegal facts on the ground,” Mr. Olmert’s office quoted him as saying.

The prime minister also told the first meeting of his new cabinet that he would crack down on wildcat settlement outposts erected in defiance of Israeli law.

In a symbolic act, Mr. Olmert occupied the chair that he had left empty for the past four months, ever since his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, fell unconscious after suffering a massive stroke.

As acting premier, Mr. Olmert left Mr. Sharon’s seat unoccupied at each cabinet meeting out of respect. He refused to occupy the prime minister”s office, preferring to continue working from his office at the Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor.

But after winning the March general election and assembling a ruling coalition government that was sworn in last week, Mr. Olmert has finally dropped the “acting” from his title, moved into the premier’s office and occupied the full chairman’s seat at cabinet meetings.

One of his first acts was to move against settlers occupying a house that lies outside a protected Jewish enclave in the historical center of Hebron, a highly volatile flashpoint between Arabs and hard-line settlers.

The settlers claim to have bought the property, but Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that key documents had been forged and ordered them evicted from the three-story building.

Nineteen police and seven settlers were slightly injured in the clashes that began before dawn, when about 1,000 policemen surrounded the settlers.

Officers had to cut their way through a specially-built double door to remove the 41 people inside. They at first appealed to the settlers – some with small children – to leave peacefully. Some agreed, but others had to be dragged out.

Settlers threw petrol bombs, as well as balloons and light bulbs filled with paint, at the officers.

Orit Struk, a Hebron settler who was inside the building during the evacuation, said: “Every Arab can buy a house in Hebron and no one will evacuate them, but because we are Jews they evacuate us. This is the direction the Olmert government wants to go: expulsion and evacuation of Jews.”

Mr. Olmert won the election with a manifesto pledge that places him at loggerheads with the settler movement.

He plans to give up those parts of the occupied West Bank where a Jewish majority cannot be guaranteed. This means about 70,000 settlers face removal from outlying settlements, 10 times the number removed from Gaza last year.

Israel’s official attitude to settlers is ambiguous with the government accepting some settlements in the West Bank, which Israel occupied after the 1967 war, as legal and others as illegal.