Israeli soldiers force settlers to leave illegal outpost

(17 Oct 2002) Night shots: 1. Various of police breaking up sit-in demonstration by settlers and their supporters to try and prevent forced evacuation of their illegal outpost 2. Lorry at site to remove houses, settler who has climbed on is thrown off 3. Settler is carried away by military 4. Various of female settlers staging sit-in protest being dragged away 5. Various as female settlers are taken on to bus still screaming and struggling 6. Close up baby pull out to group of settlers 7. Stones from buildings at outpost lifted by bulldozer for removal 8. Various of Israeli soldiers packing up settlers' belongings into boxes 9. Soldiers wheeling box onto lorry 10. Various of cranes lifting houses of settlers 11. SOUNDBITE: (Hebrew) Daniella Weiss, settler: "We will stay here on the ranch, in this house, and in other houses. And to Ben-Eliezer (Israeli defence minister) I can say, whoever harms Israel has fallen. This path will not give you glory." 12. Lorry pulls away with mobile home on back 13. Pull out on Israeli flag on window of home on back of lorry STORYLINE: Israeli soldiers and police evacuated an illegal West Bank Israeli outpost early on Thursday, forcing settlers to leave the fledgling settlement against their will. On Wednesday, some 2-thousand settlers and their supporters, most of them teenagers, had gathered at Havat Gilad (Gilad's Ranch in Hebrew) to discourage a small number of soldiers from tearing down the cluster of three mobile homes, camping tents and a roofless synagogue placed there to mark the beginning of a new settlement near the Palestinian town of Nablus. Israel's Defence Ministry, which had ordered two dozen outposts to be dismantled in the West Bank, had previously agreed on Wednesday with the Settlers' Council to allow the dwellings to remain on this hilltop as long as protesters left the area. But during the night reinforcements were brought in and large numbers of soldiers and police succeeded in dislodging the protesters and forcibly evacuated the outpost. The evacuations come just before Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon meets U-S President George W Bush at the White House. The US has been critical of settlement building, calling it an obstacle to Middle East peace efforts. Sharon has been an ardent supporter of settlements, but has sought to avoid a clash with Washington, Israel's leading ally. The wrangle over the dozens of hilltop outposts is the latest chapter in the history of a movement that has placed more than 200-thousand Jews in the West Bank and Gaza since Israel captured the areas in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians see all settlements as a principal obstacle blocking the creation of an independent state there. The confrontation over the illegal outposts could also endanger Sharon's coalition government with the more moderate Labour Party of Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. Labour favors trading much of the West Bank for peace with the Palestinians. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...