Pullout of settlers prelude to 'big battle,' scholar says

JERUSALEM -- While Israel's pullout from 25 settlements in Gaza and the West Bank took little more than a week, lasting peace with Palestinians still appears to be a long way off.

"Everybody understands that this (withdrawal) is the prelude to the big battle" over claims to land still passionately in dispute, Hebrew University political scientist Reuven Hazan says.

The battle may have already begun. Less than 48 hours after Israeli troops evacuated 15,000 settlers and activists from Gaza and four West Bank settlements -- territory Israel is ceding for what could be part of a future Palestinian state -- violence erupted in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Israeli troops killed five suspected Palestinian terrorists during a raid in the Tulkarem refugee camp overnight Wednesday. A Palestinian stabbed to death a British ultra- Orthodox Jewish student and injured his American classmate in the first attack in Jerusalem's Old City in three years.

The violence underscores the intractable dispute to come: How will the West Bank be carved up and what will become of Jerusalem, a holy city to both sides?

Even after Israel hands over Gaza some time in October, 230,000 Israelis will remain among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. They live in more than 220 settlements and unauthorized outposts strategically placed across the West Bank's terraced hills, as well as in three major settlement blocs that Israel says it will never give up. On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said a Gaza-type withdrawal would not be repeated in the West Bank and peace negotiations would begin only after Palestinians disarm militant groups.

Sharon may close a few outposts his government considers illegal, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk says, but he will continue to send Israelis to West Bank settlements despite U.S. warnings to halt construction there. Some of those settlers came from Gaza.

On Wednesday, Israel seized land near Maaleh Adumim, the West Bank's largest settlement bloc, to extend a controversial security barrier that effectively makes the area part of Jerusalem. Israeli officials also approved construction of a new police station in a disputed area between the settlement and Jerusalem, part of a plan Palestinians say will divide the West Bank in two.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed last week that the Gaza withdrawal is only the "first step towards the liberation of the West Bank and Jerusalem."

For now, both sides are likely to settle into a long-running "holding operation," predicts Shlomo Avineri, a Hebrew University political scientist.

"The time, unfortunately, is not yet ripe" for peace negotiations, he says. Instead, Israelis and Palestinians are conducting lower-level talks on Gaza that include building a seaport, repairing the airport and creating a safe-passage corridor to the West Bank.

Contributing: Martin Patience, Michele Chabin .

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