Israel completes pullout from four West Bank settlements

GANIM, West Bank - Waving the flags of rival armed factions, Palestinians poured into four abandoned West Bank Jewish settlements on Wednesday after Israel completed their evacuation under a plan to "disengage" from conflict.

Unlike the Gaza Strip, which Israel quit earlier this month, the settlements of Ganim, Kadim, Sanur and Homesh are in an area of the occupied West Bank remaining under Israeli army control.

But the army announced the complete removal of soldiers from the enclaves on Tuesday night local time, leaving them accessible to Palestinians from the nearby city of Jenin.

"Israel should withdraw from all the occupied territory and give the Palestinians the right to have their state," Zakariya Zubeidi, a leading militant from the dominant Palestinian faction Fatah, said in a speech to dozens of followers in Ganim.

Fanning out on the settlement's paddock, Zubeidi and fellow gunmen fired in the air and acted out guerrilla ambushes -- a reminder to Israel that a Palestinian revolt, largely in check since a cease-fire was declared in February, could soon resume.

Palestinians welcomed the Israeli withdrawals, which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called "disengagement" from violence that erupted in 2000. But they suspect Israel plans to parlay the Gaza pullout into a permanent hold on much of the West Bank.

There are also internal challenges, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas scrambling to preserve the primacy of Fatah against ascendant Islamist groups. Chief among these is Hamas, which is expected to make a strong showing in an upcoming Palestinian parliamentary election in the West Bank and Gaza.

In Sanur, Fatah loyalists took over an Ottoman-era compound that only a month ago saw fierce standoffs between diehard young settlers and Israeli security forces, and unfurled a huge portrait of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on its facade.

On a telephone pole opposite, Hamas supporters waved their group's green standard.

Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war. Some 116 inhabited settlements remain in the West Bank, and Sharon, with tacit US approval, has said Israel will keep hold of larger settlement blocs forever.

There are around 245,000 settlers living isolated from 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. All 8,500 settlers were evacuated from Gaza, where 1.4 million Palestinians live.

- REUTERS