Clash Erupts In West Bank over Israeli Army Demolition of Settlements

Four Israeli settlers and three Palestinians were wounded Monday in clashes in the northern West Bank over the forcible removal of two mobile homes of the settlers, police said.

The clashes occurred when Israeli troops removed two mobile homes in the outpost of Givat Ronen, near the Har Bracha settlement, sparking protests from Israeli settlers, who hurled rocks at Palestinian vehicles at a nearby check-point.

As troops moved in to disperse the settlers from the check-point, the latter regrouped at the nearby village of Kafr Burin--the scene of several earlier attacks by settlers--where they clashed with Palestinian villagers.

The settlers also set on fire a Palestinian field near the village of Hawarrah, south of Nablus. Smoke and flames could be seen in early afternoon on the hill leading up to Har Bracha.

"Four Israelis were wounded this morning, one of them seriously, when Palestinians attacked them with stones in Burin," a spokesman for the Israeli police said, adding that border police had intervened to restore calm.

He confirmed that two settlers were detained while protesting the removal of the mobile homes.

Both the citizens' committee and the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip said they had no hand in Monday's violence. In the evening, the committee organized a protest, in which activists blocked 13 intersections in the Samaria region from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. to condemn the demolitions.

Hardline settlers have long pursued a "price tag" policy of attacking Palestinian farms and villages to protest the military's removal of outposts of settlements.

The international community considers all Israeli settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem--territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war--illegal, but the settler movement of the Jewish state is strongly opposed to any withdrawal from these areas as it views them an inseparable part of biblical Israel.

The Palestinians view the presence of a half million Israelis in more than 120 settlements scattered across the occupied territories as a severe threat to their ability to establish a viable independent state.