Israeli forces storm diehard West Bank settlements

SANUR/HOMESH, West Bank - Israeli forces smashed their way into two West Bank settlements on Tuesday and dragged away ultrarightist Jews dug in for a last stand against evacuation after failing to foil a pullout from occupied Gaza.

Police stormed a citadel and synagogues in the Sanur and Homesh enclaves that had been fortified by radicals, drawing a hail of bottles, light bulbs, paint, ketchup, eggs and cooking oil as they began extracting diehard settlers.

Some were removed from a synagogue roof in the scoop of one of the bulldozers that had earlier rammed through makeshift barriers of burning tyres and rubbish at the entry gates to Sanur and neighbouring Homesh.

Palestinians want Israel to leave all of the West Bank and Gaza but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has sworn to keep the biggest Jewish settlements in the West Bank, where some 230,000 settlers live among 2.4 million Palestinians.

Ultranationalists want to make the withdrawal from a pocket of the northern West Bank more painful than the generally smooth evacuation from Gaza, completed on Monday, to deter Israel from ever again ceding Jewish enclaves in occupied territory.

Sharon's "disengagement plan" marks the first uprooting of settlers from occupied land Palestinians want for a state.

In the face of threatened violent resistance in barricaded redoubts, security forces dispensed with extended negotiations used in Gaza and moved swiftly on radicals hunkered down in three synagogues, an old stone citadel and private homes.

The young ultranationalists had streamed into the two enclaves from other West Bank settlements recently to bolster a few dozen remaining residents holding out against evacuation.

After brief attempts to coax out settlers, police equipped with riot batons and shields broke easily into houses and used saws to cut their way into a barricaded half-built synagogue where they separated youths lying, arms linked, on the floor.

After surrounding Sanur's citadel, they bashed down the door to take on far-right religious teenagers armed with iron rods and shields, some of them dancing on its roof. A rabbi was negotiating with them to leave peacefully.

Some settlers harangued soldiers. One confronted a woman officer, held up a portrait and said: "Here's my son, who was murdered by Palestinians, and now you want to expel his father."

A teenage girl threw herself on the ground and a neighbour, holding up her small child, screamed: "You cannot force us out of the land of Israel."

RESIGNATION

But resident settlers in both enclaves began vacating their homes without violence, walking in resignation to evacuation buses. Others, mounting passive resistance, were carried out.

A first busload of 50 pulled away at midmorning.

"There were 60 families in Sanur but (few) are left now. What we're dealing with here is a huge number of infiltrators who make this much more a fight over ideology (than settlers clinging to homes)," said army spokesman Jonathan Schroeder.

"Our current estimate is that there are 1,000 protesters here, mostly out of sight, holed up in houses," Israeli national police chief Moshe Karadi told reporters.

Israel said it finished extracting 8,500 Jews from all 21 settlements in Gaza on Monday, two weeks faster than expected, a big step towards ending 38 years of occupation there.

Police quickly vanquished resistance in Gaza enclaves posed mainly by teenage visitors from radical West Bank settlements.

Settlers voluntarily vacated two other northern West Bank enclaves included in Sharon's withdrawal plan.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas phoned Sharon to say he hoped the pullout would open a new page in relations and the two agreed to meet soon, Sharon's office said in a statement. The two last met on June 21 at a frosty summit in Jerusalem.

US PRAISE

The United States, the traditional Middle East peace broker, praised both sides for showing leadership. "In the heart of the Middle East, a hopeful story is unfolding," said US President George W. Bush. "Peace is within reach in the Holy Land."

The World Court has ruled Israel's settlements in Gaza and the West Bank are illegal. Israel disputes this.

Unlike in Gaza, which Israel plans to hand over to Palestinians in October, the Jewish state plans to retain security control of the West Bank after the pullout there.

Sharon says the trade-off for ceding Gaza will be permanent Israeli control over West Bank settlement blocs he regards as strategically vital to Israel. This would strip Palestinians of land central to their goal of a viable state.

Most Israelis back Sharon's plan and the United States hopes it will serve as a catalyst for renewed peacemaking. Rightists condemn the pullout as "capitulation" to a Palestinian revolt. Palestinian militants have celebrated the withdrawal.

Sharon says further withdrawals will come only through talks with the Palestinians and that this in turn depends on militants being disarmed under a U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan.

Israel has failed to meet its own road map commitment to freeze settlement building.

- REUTERS