HOMESH (West Bank), Aug 23: Israel completed a withdrawal of 15,000 Jewish settlers and supporters from occupied land on Tuesday after police ejected ultranationalist protesters from a synagogue and a citadel to crush last stands in two West Bank enclaves.

Predictions of a tough resistance to evacuation proved wrong just as they did in Gaza, where troops cleared out settlers from all 21 enclaves two weeks before schedule in a move to ‘disengage’ from conflict with Palestinians.

The two sides now face the challenge of translating Israel’s first dismantling of settlements on land that Palestinians want for a future state into fresh Middle East peace efforts after years of bloody stalemate.

Police stormed the citadel and the synagogue in the Sanur and Homesh enclaves fortified by some 1,000 radicals, drawing a hail of bottles, light bulbs, paint, ketchup, eggs, tomatoes, cooking oil and flour in their effort to extract diehard settlers.

Some were plucked from a synagogue roof in the scoop of one of the bulldozers that had rammed through barriers of burning tyres and rubbish at the gates to neighbouring Sanur and Homesh.

There was a brief melee on one Homesh house roof after police, holding up shields to deflect projectiles hurled by youths, scaled ladders and scrambled over a razor-wire barricade to tackle the recalcitrant protesters.

As the operation was declared complete, police grabbed last holdouts on the roof of the citadel and pushed them kicking and screaming into a shipping container that was then lowered by crane to a waiting bus.

Israel’s army chief, Lt Gen Dan Halutz, said demolitions of vacant settler homes would be finished in 10 days and a follow-up military pullout from Gaza ‘will be accomplished during September ... I believe close to the end of September’. All of Gaza would then come under Palestinian rule. Israel plans to retain security control in the northern West Bank.

US-led diplomats count on Premier Ariel Sharon’s ‘disengagement Plan’ to kickstart the roadmap for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and in Gaza, where evacuations of settlers wrapped up on Monday.—Reuters