Troops hacked their way into a barricaded synagogue in the heart of biblical Israel on Tuesday as they evacuated defiant settlers from the northern West Bank after the historic pull-out of Jews from the Gaza Strip.
An Israeli flag was set alight by those holed up in two settlements, Sanur and Homesh, to express their disgust at their one-time champion, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is now overseeing the first-ever pull-out of Israeli citizens from the West Bank.
While the northern West Bank evacuations represent only a tiny fraction of the 120 settlements that are dotted across the territory captured by Israel in 1967, the unprecedented operation has raised international hopes of a genuine breakthrough in the peace process.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas telephoned Sharon on Monday night to congratulate the Israeli premier on the completion of the pull-out from Gaza and to express his hopes for the opening of a new chapter in relations after five years of bloodshed, according to Sharon’s office.
Police said they believed those inside the settlements of Sanur and Homesh had massed an arsenal of stones, sharp metal projectiles, knives, stun grenades and possibly pistols.
In Sanur, troops used metal-cutting equipment to storm the synagogue where several dozen protesters had taken refuge behind metal bars and razor wire.
Troops were seen carrying out the protesters one by one from the half-built structure after attempts at mediation failed.
Security forces also cleared several dozen religious students who had taken refuge inside a seminary, or yeshiva, that had been a mosque for Jordanian soldiers before the territory’s capture by Israel 38 years ago.
The final showdown, however, still loomed with scores of youths on the rooftop of a former police station. The protesters, having wrapped the roof with barbed wire, had also assembled metal spears in a bid to prevent any attempt to storm their bastion.
While most of the residents had left by the time hundreds of troops stormed into Sanur and Homesh shortly after sunrise, a few agreed to be bused out at the last moment and most of those remaining are radical youths.
”You should be ashamed,” one sobbing woman screamed at a group of police in Sanur. ”You’ve destroyed our lives, but we will return here.”
In Homesh, Israeli border police burst through burning barricades and cut through rolls of barbed wire into the enclave, where youths commandeered abandoned houses, blocked the front doors with rubble and stacked up broken tiles to use as ammunition.
Graffiti covered the walls. ”Sharon is a traitor,” read one slogan, while another proclaimed: ”A Jew does not expel a Jew.”
Such taunts were heard frequently during the evacuation in Gaza, where violence was restricted to a handful of hardcore settlements in rare scenes of confrontations between settlers and Israeli soldiers who used to protect them.
The pull-out from Gaza was completed two weeks ahead of schedule on Monday when the hard-line community of Netzarim was evacuated.
Sharon’s office said Abbas had hailed the pull-out as ”historic and courageous” when he spoke with the Israeli premier by phone on Monday, their first contact since an abortive summit in June.
Despite the bitter divisions his plan has wrought within Israel, Sharon has won widespread international praise for overseeing the first-ever evacuation of territory that the Palestinians want as part of a future state.
”This past week, Prime Minister Sharon and the Israeli people took a courageous and painful step by beginning to remove settlements in Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank,” United States President George Bush said on Monday.
”We’ll continue working for the day when the map of the Middle East shows two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security.”
The radical Palestinian movement Hamas, challenging Abbas’s Fatah movement for the first time in legislative elections next January, has portrayed the pull-out as an act of surrender.
Its supporters staged a mass rally on Monday night in Gaza City to celebrate seeing the back of the last settlers in their stronghold.
”Hamas will continue to follow its strategic path, to continue our resistance to liberate all the land,” one Hamas leader told the 10 000-strong crowd. — Sapa-AFP