Jewish settlers set to fight threatened demolition

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Thousands of Israeli activists barricaded themselves at a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Wednesday vowing to fight police and soldiers sent to demolish part of an unauthorized outpost.

The confrontation over Amona, a hilltop enclave near the West Bank town of Ramallah, threatened to break into the worst violence between Israeli troops and Jewish settlers since a Gaza withdrawal last year.

Israel's Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has targeted 24 settlement outposts for removal in a bid to implement a commitment of a U.S.-backed peace "road map," and assert control after assuming the powers of an incapacitated Ariel Sharon.

Olmert hinted in a speech on Tuesday he would remove isolated West Bank settlements after a March 28 election that his Kadima party is expected to win.

Olmert told a party rally he would seek to "shape the permanent borders of Israel as a country with a clear and solid Jewish majority."

Settlers still stunned by Israel's total pullout from Gaza settlements in September, gathered at Amona to try to block the government from destroying buildings that have been built without permits and in defiance of Israel's commitment to stop building settlements in the West Bank.

More than 1,000 soldiers and police headed toward the settlement as well late on Tuesday, blocking roads to try to minimize the protests. Several thousand more troops are expected to be dispatched at dawn, when the demolitions could begin.

The demolitions were to go ahead despite violence that flared in the West Bank on Tuesday when Israel killed an Islamic Jihad leader and another gunman in the first fatal clash since Hamas won an upset victory in a January 25 Palestinian election.

"There will be a real struggle here, a struggle for our country," settler Yitzhak Meir said at Amona as protesters defied army roadblocks to scale the rocky hill and barricade themselves on rooftops of buildings slated for demolition.

Israeli media said settlers were stockpiling rocks and bottles at Amona, had surrounded the rooftops with barbed wire and had scattered nails on the roads into the area.

SETTLERS SEEN AS "PUNCHING BAG"

"We are tired of being the country's punching bag. This is an attempt to move back to the 1967 borders," settler Shimon Raklin told Israeli television, referring to the West Bank which Israel captured in a 1967 Middle East War.

Israeli rightists view the West Bank as a biblical birthright. The World Court says all settlements there are illegal. Israel disputes this, but has committed to dismantle a series of outposts erected by settlers without permits.

Israel does not plan to remove the entire unauthorized enclave of Amona, but to bulldoze nine uninhabited buildings as it committed to the high court. It will let several dozen families in trailer homes remain, pending further discussion.

Israel Radio said officials were negotiating with the settlers to avoid confrontation, but that Olmert had turned down a bid by settlers to move the disputed buildings elsewhere.

A last-minute compromise had prevented conflict this week in the West Bank town of Hebron, where settlers agreed to evacuate an unauthorized enclave after Israel said it would consider expanding that settlement at a future time.

Violence flared on Tuesday near Amona, when 300 settlers stormed a nearby army base and tampered with a bulldozer before being forced out.

More than 100 settlers blocked a West Bank road elsewhere and punctured the tires of a military vehicle. Several Palestinians were hurt by stones thrown by settlers, and two settlers were arrested in a separate incident, reports said.

Right-wing leaders accused Olmert of timing the West Bank demolitions to enhance the popularity of his centrist Kadima party, a frontrunner in the polls for the March election.

Kadima was founded by Sharon, who has been in a coma since a January 4 stroke.

"We will be there to protest the government's provocations," Effi Eitam, a lawmaker of the National Religious Party, said.

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