Israeli police remove West Bank settlers

Hundreds of Israeli police dragged squatters from the ruins of a Jewish settlement today, ending a three-day stand-off between the government and Jewish settlers trying to re-establish the settlement.

The confrontation took place in the former Homesh settlement, dismantled in the summer of 2005 as part of Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip and parts of the northern West Bank.

Some 2,500 protesters marched to Homesh on Monday, pledging to rebuild it. Demonstrators set up large canvas tents and started piling up rocks, in a symbolic attempt at reconstruction. A family evacuated from Homesh in 2005 held a ritual circumcision for a newborn son.

About 500 were still there when hundreds of riot police moved in this morning, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Some packed up their tents and left voluntarily, Rosenfeld said. Others resisted.

The troops began dragging some protesters away, with four officers carrying each demonstrator – one holding each limb – and placing them on waiting buses, a scene reminiscent of the original 2005 evacuation.

In one scene, police pried a toddler from the hands of her mother, who refused to walk to a waiting bus with the child. As a policeman carried the shrieking child, four others lifted the mother by her limbs.

Several hours later, all the protesters had been removed, Rosenfeld said.

Demonstrators said they’d be back. “They won’t expel us, we will return!” chanted several youths as they pounded their fists in the air from the windows of a bus.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was elected last year on a pledge to evacuate additional West Bank settlements and draw Israel’s borders without waiting for a peace deal with the Palestinians.

However, he shelved the divisive plan after emerging politically weakened from Israel’s war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon last summer.