An Israeli military raid on a West Bank refugee camp left four militants dead Wednesrday and an Orthodox Jewish man was stabbed to death in Jerusalem — an eruption of violence a day after Israel completed its evacuation of 25 settlements, AP reported.

At the Tulkarem refugee camp, Israeli soldiers surrounded a house and exchanged fire with militants inside and outside, witnesses said.

The bodies of the four dead were brought to the Tulkarem hospital an hour after the incident. Residents said they were members of Islamic Jihad. Two other Palestinians were wounded, they said.

Israeli military officials identified the Palestinians involved in the confrontation as top local leaders of the Islamic Jihad, responsible for the last two suicide bombings in Israel — in Tel Aviv in February and Netanya in July.

Earlier in Jerusalem, a Palestinian stabbed two young ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Old City, police said, calling it a terror attack. One of the victims later died of his wounds. The assailant escaped.

Israeli media reported that the dead man was a young seminary student from Britain. His name was not released.

Also Wednesday, the Justice Ministry said Israel issued orders to seize Palestinian land to build its separation barrier along a route that would effectively annex the West Bank's largest Jewish settlement to Jerusalem.

Palestinians objected to the seizure, and said that the barrier would cut them off from the part of Jerusalem they claim for a state and reinforce Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's intention to solidify Israel's grip on its main West Bank settlement blocs after the pullout from the all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank.

The settlement, Maaleh Adumim, three miles east of Jerusalem in the Judean desert, has about 30,000 residents. Sharon has said repeatedly that it will remain in Israel even after a final peace accord with the Palestinians.

Israel says the barrier is needed to keep suicide bombers from entering the country. When complete, the 425-mile complex of walls, electric fences, trenches and barbed wire is expected to include about 8 percent of the West Bank on the "Israeli" side.

Amos Gil, executive director of Ir Amim, an Israeli settlement monitoring group, said the Maaleh Adumim barrier confiscation would seize about 23 square miles of land.

Attorney General Meni Mazuz approved the order after a legal review, the Justice Ministry said.

"Such decisions will only serve to undermine any efforts to resume negotiations," said a senior Palestinian official, Saeb Erekat.

The United States issued a statement saying the barrier "is a problem to the extent that it prejudges final borders, confiscates Palestinian property or imposes further hardship on the Palestinian people."

Israeli army to leave Gaza by mid-Sept

Israeli military forces are expected to be out of Gaza in mid-September, completing a pullout from the territory after 38 years of occupation, Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said Wednesday.

Israel finished removing 15,000 settlers and supporters from Gaza and some of the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, two weeks ahead of schedule, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to "disengage" from conflict with Palestinians seeking statehood.

US-led mediators hope the pullout will jumpstart a Middle East "road map" peace process. But Sharon says Israel will never cede larger West Bank settlements while Palestinian leaders lack control over militant groups opposed to peacemaking.

Fears of fierce resistance to evacuation by settlers proved overblown as Israeli forces emptied 21 settlements in Gaza and two in the West Bank in just one week - the first uprooting of Jewish enclaves on land Palestinians want for a state.

"The evacuation was conducted honorably and within a shorter timetable than anticipated. We planned three weeks. But 50 to 60 percent (of settlers) had already left. This accelerated the pace of evacuations from the outset," Mofaz said on Army Radio.

Sharon faces political fallout

Now that Jewish settlers have been pulled out of the occupied Gaza Strip, Sharon could face a "disengagement" of his own.

An opinion poll published in the Haaretz daily Wednesday showed him in deep political trouble.

In a face-off for the leadership of their Likud party, Sharon's most powerful political rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, would take 47 per cent of the vote to 30.5 per cent for the prime minister if an election were held now, the survey showed.

Netanyahu, who resigned as finance minister in what he called a protest against the evacuation of 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank, has been hammering home his view that Sharon has defrauded voters who elected him.

Conventional wisdom in Israel says much will depend on whether Palestinian militants in Gaza and the West Bank renew attacks they largely stopped some seven months ago -- violence which they said forced Sharon to retreat from occupied land.

(China Daily, Chinadaily.com via agencies August 25, 2005)