Last targeted settlements cleared

Last targeted settlements cleared
Israeli forces carry out the entire planned evacuation of all settlers in Gaza and at 4 sites in the West Bank in one week with little violence but no shortage of anguish

By Christine Spolar and Rafael D. Frankel, Chicago Tribune. Christine Spolar reported from Homesh, and Rafael D. Frankel reported from Sanur
Published August 24, 2005

HOMESH, West Bank -- Israeli forces Tuesday overwhelmed the hilltop settlements of Homesh and Sanur with practiced assurance, finishing a pullout of thousands of Jewish settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank in a week's time.

After swiftly completing the evacuation of 25 settlements in Palestinian territories, the army now will focus on ending its presence in Gaza.

Houses left by the settlers will be razed in the next 10 days, army officials said. Graves already are being moved, and religious buildings will be destroyed. The withdrawal will be complete when Israeli troops uproot their barracks and checkpoints to leave the Gaza Strip, probably within weeks, to Palestinian Authority rule.

"It's finished but it's not over," Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the army chief of staff, said Tuesday night as troops still were wrangling with the last civilian in Homesh.

The Israeli government has voiced concerns that Palestinians, eager to claim a victory from the withdrawal, will try to enter the settlement sites during the transition. Israeli soldiers are expected to leave no later than early October.

The pullout from the West Bank was the final planned eviction of Jews from land where the Palestinians want to form a state. Twenty-one settlements in Gaza were emptied beginning Aug. 17. Two other settlements in the West Bank, Kadim and Ganim, already were largely vacated.

In Homesh and Sanur, army officials had feared that some settlers, who believed they were reclaiming biblical land for the Jewish state, would fight violently to remain.

Instead, the West Bank settlements, largely religious and right-wing, fell quickly, and soldiers saw no new wrinkles to the pattern of resistance. Army officials said Tuesday night that homes there also will be razed.

`Not volunteering'

Yedidya Lerner, a Homesh settlement spokesman, said Tuesday that the settlers never were armed for the withdrawal and none planned a radical protest. He resented reports that the government considered Homesh an armed threat. The army had negotiated throughout the day with rabbis.

"We're not volunteering to leave the Holy Land," Lerner said. "We won't be embracing these soldiers. We were sorry to see that it was very easy for them in [Gaza]."

Settlers wailed, climbed onto roofs, sprayed troops with water and flour and locked themselves into synagogues to evade eviction. Soldiers used bulldozers in Homesh and cranes in Sanur to break through to the most troublesome settlers. In both communities, troops gave the settlers time to shout themselves into a weakened, though hysterical, state.

In Homesh the army evacuated 709 civilians; one civilian and five police and soldiers were slightly hurt in the confrontations. In Sanur, 620 people were evacuated; one civilian and four police and soldiers were slightly wounded, army officials said.

In the past few days, authorities added, both communities were largely filled with infiltrators protesting the pullout.

In Homesh, infiltrators took control of houses already vacated. Dozens of men and boys locked themselves into the community's synagogue and yeshiva. At one point, 80 girls took over the second floor of a house and sang and danced as soldiers waited outside.

When young women soldiers were sent in, the resisters kicked and screamed for hours. Other girls hurled bags of oil, vinegar and eggs

The synagogue was breached later by troops who first took over the roof and then drilled open the front door.

In Sanur, two dozen girls barricaded themselves inside the courtyard of an art gallery. At an old British police building, 80 resisters sought refuge on the rooftop and dozens more locked themselves inside the building. Security forces used cranes to lift and evacuate them.

In both communities, residents hurled insults at the soldiers as they walked into town.

In Homesh, Mihael Manasherov seethed over how the Israeli army was, as he said, "being used" in an unjust cause.

`Army for Palestine'

"They look like an army for Palestine, not the Israeli army," said Manasherov, an emigre from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, who has lived 14 years in the settlement.

Manasherov, a grandfather of 10, could not hold back his ire as troops walked past the door of his two-bedroom house where a large Israeli flag fluttered. Nothing inside his home was boxed or packed, but the 66-year-old wanted to spend his last few moments in Homesh with soldiers.

"Go on, army of Palestine," he said in a calm, quiet voice to some startled troops. "You're robots."

©2005 The Chicago Tribune