MIDDLE EAST: The uppermost stone-built houses of Burqa lie 200 metres from the red-roofed Israeli settlement of Homesh due to be evacuated by the end of the week.
The Israeli army expects opponents of the withdrawal to make their last stand at Homesh and the neighbouring settlement of Sa-Nur, a few kilometres to the west.
Israeli police predict that rocks, oil, paint, acid and perhaps even guns could be used by extremists who have infiltrated these two settlements and are determined to put up even greater resistance than those who fought the police and army from the synagogue roof at the Gaza settlement of Kafr Dorom.
Yesterday the roads to Homesh were closed. The colony has become a military area where non-residents are banned. During recent weeks, 1,500 outsiders, the majority of whom are religious Jews, have infiltrated Homesh where only 15 families lived.
As dawn was breaking, 40 settlers, many wearing prayer shawls, came down the hill to Burqa and attempted to enter two empty houses near the main road.
The villagers called the Israeli army which promptly entered Burqa and rounded up all but three girls who threatened the Palestinians with death before departing. From the roof of the blue-domed Burqa mosque, we could see settlers, some wearing orange T-shirts, the colour of the anti-evacuation movement, trying to cut through the outermost fence of three surrounding the settlement.
Burqa is an old village with a population of 5,000. Since the occupation in 1967, Israel expropriated 3,750 acres of its land and limited the Palestinian built-up area to 175 acres. Homesh, 23 years old, was built on 2,762 acres of Burqa's land, but the reach of the settlers goes far beyond the fortified boundaries of their settlement. They fire at Palestinians who attempt to reach olive terraces or graze sheep on the hills near the colony and dump raw sewage in fields, killing the crops and making the land unusable.
The Israeli army has established a new military camp and checkpoints on the road leading to Sa-Nur, also decked with the tents of outside extremists, and was preparing for the arrival of busloads of police trained to remove the settlers without excessive use of force. The ratio is four policemen to every settler.
The two northernmost settlements, Kadim and Gannim, were abandoned before the forcible evacuation began. Once all four are emptied, the Israeli army will retain control over the entire area which will revert to Palestinian administrative control. But, as in Gaza, Palestinians living here will have freedom of movement only within this sector, 15 per cent of the West Bank.