Israeli police and army on Wednesday morning successfully evacuated most of the right-wing activists from a destroyed West Bank settlement, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported.
Some 1,000 police and Israel Defense Forces soldiers arrived at the ruins of former West Bank settlement of Homesh early Wednesday morning, where more than 300 right-wing activists had stayed for two days.
A few minutes after the deadline police had given these Jewish activists to leave the site, police began forcibly removing them, picking them up and putting them on buses, the Ha'aretz report said, quoting police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
Police told the activists that Homesh was now a closed military zone and that they must leave the place immediately.
About 100 activists had packed up their tents and were leaving voluntarily, Rosenfeld said, adding that there was no apparent violence.
The activists, mainly youth, arrived at the former settlement on a march organized by former Homesh residents in an attempt to reinhabit the community, which was evacuated about a year and a half ago as part of the disengagement plan.
On Tuesday, police officials warned that should the settlers fail to evacuate willingly, the government would be inclined to give the green light for the forceful evacuation of the settlers who vowed to put up a tough resistance.
Early on Tuesday, settlers punctured the tires of four Border Police vehicles, and in the afternoon young people burned tires and placed barricades on the road to Homesh, although they did not actively block the road to soldiers.
(Xinhua News Agency March 29, 2007)
