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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and