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Israeli forces prepare for West Bank standoff

Posted on: Monday, 22 August 2005, 20:38 CDT

By Matt Spetalnick

SANUR, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli security forces could face a violent last stand in two West Bank settlements on Tuesday by opponents of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's evacuation plan who failed to thwart a Gaza pullout.

Hundreds of settler youths were set to barricade themselves on the roof of a stone citadel in Sanur armed with iron rods and shields. Other radicals used razor wire to fortify themselves inside homes in nearby Homesh.

Police said early on Tuesday security forces had begun moving toward the settlements.

Ultra-nationalists want to make the withdrawal from a pocket of the northern West Bank more painful than the relatively smooth evacuation from the Gaza Strip to discourage Israel from ever again giving up settlements in the biblical heartland.

Despite the threat of clashes, a 5,500-strong evacuation force was all but certain to break down the last two bastions of resistance to the final phase of Sharon's plan for the first removal of settlers from land Palestinians want for a state.

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

Settlers held a final evening prayer service in Sanur's half-finished synagogue. The chants of Jewish prayer mingled incongruously with the sound of the muezzin from mosque loudspeakers in nearby Palestinian villages.

Israeli police chief Moshe Karadi told Israel's Channel 2 television: "In Sanur it appears the resistance could be more complicated than it was elsewhere. We hope to be proven wrong and we hope that good sense will win out."

RESISTANCE

Settler leaders said they planned only non-violent resistance. Police took up positions at the entrance with a water cannon on standby.

Police said they arrested more than 200 protesters who tried to block roads or riot against the planned West Bank evacuation in northern Israel and the West Bank on Monday.

Israel said it finished evacuating all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza on Monday, a step toward ending 38 years of occupation. Some 8,500 Jews lived in the settlements. Two other West Bank settlements were evacuated last week.

Palestinians would like Israel to pull out of both territories but fear Israel aims to keep most West Bank settlements housing 230,000 people. Some 3.8 million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

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 on June 21 at a frosty summit in Jerusalem.

Abbas called the withdrawal a "brave and historic decision," the Israeli statement said.

Washington, the traditional Middle East peace broker, praised both sides for showing leadership.

"In the heart of the Middle East, a hopeful story is unfolding," President Bush said. "Peace is within reach in the Holy Land."

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

SANUR

On top of the citadel in Sanur, youths welded metal rods into barricades to repel Israeli troops. Draped at the top, a banner said: "damned is the one who expels his brother from his home."

Arieh Eldad, an ultranationalist member of parliament who recently took up residence in Sanur, said the protesters would barricade themselves on the rooftop of the former British police station, the settlement's largest building.

He said they would use specially made shields with anti-pullout slogans painted on them to push back security forces trying to being them down off their perch.

"The message we want to send is that if you want to take Jews from their homes, you have to cage them and take them away," he said.

Most Israelis back Sharon's plan and the United States hopes it will serve as a catalyst for renewed peacemaking. Rightists say the pullout, celebrated as a victory by militants, rewards the Palestinian uprising which started in 2000.

Sharon says further withdrawals will only come through talks with the Palestinians, which in turn depend on militants being disarmed under a U.S.-backed "road map." Israel has failed to meet its own road map commitment to freeze settlement building.

Source: REUTERS

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