Israel clears West Bank militant strongholds

Ravi Nessman, Sanur

It is the first time Israel has abandoned Jewish communities in lands the Palestinians claim for their future state.About 6,000 troops armed with riot gear, circular saws, water hoses and wire cutters were mobilised to overwhelm the last stand against the pullout in the West Bank settlements of Sanur and Homesh.

The resistance was staged largely by 1,600 Israelis who didn't even live there some of them youths known for their extremism and rejection of the Israeli government's authority.

But security officials' fears of armed violence didn't materialise, and the military declared the evacuation of the two settlements over just nine hours after troops stormed them.

Residents of the other two West Bank settlements slated for removal, Ganim and Kadim, had already left on their own.

Military bulldozers yesterday knocked down all the structures in Kadim, and were razing buildings in Ganim.

The demolition of homes in all evacuated settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be completed in 10 days, said the Israeli army chief, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz.

In the West Bank, Israel is destroying homes to prevent Jewish extremists from returning there. The military fears that if left standing, these settlements could also become flashpoints of violence between settlers and Palestinians.

In Gaza, the Israeli government after quiet consultations with the US and the Palestinians decided to demolish the private homes used by Jewish settlers, many of them single-family villas, and to leave most public buildings intact. Palestinians, who plan high-rise housing units in place of the villas, will be use the rubble to build a seaport and other projects.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said Israel's withdrawal from all 21 Gaza Strip outposts and four isolated communities in the northern West Bank will improve Israel's security by reducing friction with the Palestinians, and solidify Israel's grip on main West Bank settlement blocs, where most of its 240,000 settlers live.

Subhi Alawneh, a 58-year-old farmer from the nearby Palestinian village of Jaba, said yesterday was "a day of celebration" for the more than 40,000 Palestinians who live near Sanur.

In another village, residents watched the evacuations with binoculars and handed out sweets. In one of the few instances of Palestinian fire since the evacuations began, gunmen shot at Israeli troops patrolling an area a few kilometres from Sanur and Homesh yesterday. One militant was moderately wounded in the ensuing gun battle.

Despite the lack of armed violence yesterday, there was more force and few of the heart-rending scenes of personal pain that had taken centre stage in the evacuation of Gaza in the preceding week.

Hundreds of protesters holed up inside an old British fortress in Sanur where most of the settlement's resisters had barricaded themselves.

Troops carrying shields and wearing helmets sawed open the building's iron doors to bring out resisters, some with legs and arms thrashing, from the ground floor of the building as dozens of residents danced on the rooftop. The toughest resistance in Homesh came at a religious seminary, where troops protected by shields used wire cutters to cut lengths of concertina wire that resisters had placed around the roof's perimeter.

The showdown came just hours after Israel wound up its evacuation of all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza. The entire operation, which had been scheduled to take four weeks, was over in just one.