Israeli forces smashed their way into two West Bank settlements yesterday 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 plucked from a synagogue roof in the scoop of one of the bulldozers that had rammed through barriers of burning tires and rubbish at the gates to Sanur and neighboring Homesh.
PHOTO: AP
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.
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, a seminary, an old citadel and private homes.
The young ultranationalists had streamed into the two enclaves from other West Bank settlements to bolster a few dozen remaining residents holding out against evacuation.
"You cannot force us out of the land of Israel," one settler mother screamed at soldiers arriving at her door.
After brief attempts to coax out occupants, police equipped with riot batons and shields broke easily into houses and used saws, pile-drivers and sledgehammers to batter their way into two fortified synagogues and a seminary.
They found praying youths prone on the floor, arms entwined, and wrestled to separate them and haul them out to buses.
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.
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.
By midday, about 330 radicals had been removed from 19 buildings in Sanur and Homesh, an army spokesman said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas phoned Sharon to say he hoped the pullout would open a new chapter in relations and the two agreed to meet soon, Sharon's office said. The two last met on June 21 at a tense summit.
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.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS