Israeli Troops Move Against Settlers

Israeli soldiers dismantled three unpopulated settlement outposts Wednesday, and Defense Ministry officials said more illegal enclaves, including inhabited ones, will be targeted soon. Settlers claim the moves are the result of domestic politics.

The outposts are little more than a few buildings used by Jewish settlers to claim disputed land.

Elsewhere in the West Bank, the military demolished two homes of suspected Palestinian militants. In an orchard in northern Israel, near the West Bank, an explosion caused no harm, and police were investigating whether a bomb intended for an attack blew up prematurely.

For the first time in 20 days, Israel lifted the curfew on the West Bank town of Nablus, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger. Palestinian residents have been confined to their homes for most of the past 100 days because the army says militants there are planning suicide bombings. Residents say the curfew is an economic catastrophe.

Meanwhile, the White House gave Israel another sharp slap Tuesday over a raid into Gaza earlier in the week that killed Palestinian civilians.

An administration statement described President Bush as "deeply concerned" about the dead and wounded Palestinians.

"While the administration supports Israel's right to self-defense, it is critical that Israeli forces make every effort to avoid harm to civilians in exercising that right," spokesman Ari Fleischer said. "The president urges Israel to minimize the risk to civilian populations in areas in which Israeli Defense Forces are operating."

An Israeli raid Monday in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis left 16 Palestinians dead and more than 100 wounded.

The administration, however, is counting on Israel if there is a battle with Iraq.

"Clouds of war are darkening our region," Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon told soldiers in a tour of an army base in southern Israel on Wednesday. "I hope they won't reach us. But we have to know that if Israel is attacked, it will protect its citizens."

The United States reportedly has promised to defend Israel against an Iraqi attack, by giving Israel advance warning, taking out Iraqi missile launchers in the first phases of a U.S. operation, and by responding to any attack against Israel.

The campaign to dismantle settlement outposts is being led by Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, leader of the moderate Labor Party, a junior partner in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's coalition.

Settler leaders on Tuesday accused Ben-Eliezer of targeting the enclaves for internal political reasons. Ben-Eliezer faces a tough battle for re-election as party chief in November, and his detractors allege that he moved against the outposts to win votes from the dovish wing of the party.

The settlers wonder why the army isn't chasing Palestinian terrorists.

"Rather than dealing with security operations, they have to pull down little huts," said spokesman David Wilder.

Ben-Eliezer said Israel is a state of law, and he won't allow settlers to take the law into their own hands.

Dozens of outposts have been established by settlers on isolated West Bank hilltops since 1998, in hopes of thwarting the transfer of land to the Palestinians in a future peace deal. The enclaves are typically a few miles away from established settlements and consist of shipping containers, mobile homes, a generator and a water tank. Soldiers have been deployed to guard the populated enclaves.

The authorities made several halfhearted attempts to dismantle the outposts in the past, with limited success.

Israel Army Radio said Wednesday that Sharon had no plan to interfere with the dismantling of the outposts. As foreign minister in 1998, at a time when his government was engaged in land-for-peace talks with the Palestinians, Sharon encouraged settlers to grab more hilltops.

The three outposts dismantled Wednesday were located in the central West Bank.

"We will of course oppose in every legal way possible in order to cancel this decision," a settler leader, Benzi Lieberman, said.

The army has given settler leaders a list of dozens of settlement outposts that the Defense Ministry has ordered dismantled. The Defense Ministry dismantled 11 outposts on June 30.

In a village near the West Bank city of Nablus, troops razed the family homes of Maher Bisher and Bilal Abbas, members of the Islamic militant group Hamas who are in Israeli custody.

Residents were only able to take a few possessions before soldiers blew up the buildings, witnesses said. Several nearby homes were damaged, some seriously, by the blasts.

The army said Abbas and Bisher killed an Israeli couple and wounded two of their children in a shooting attack in August.

The army says house demolitions serve as a deterrent, while Palestinians say the practice amounts to collective punishment and violates international law. The army has destroyed more than 30 Palestinian homes since July.

Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved in ones in Mideast violence launched an unusual blood drive Wednesday. The Palestinians donated blood to Israeli hospitals and the Israelis to Palestinian hospitals.

"We, the Israelis and Palestinians, we share the same blood," said Yael Artzi, an Israeli member of the Forum for Peace. "We share the same pain."