Israel had relaxed its military grip on Beit Hanoun earlier in the day when troops withdrew from the Palestinian town into which it swept last Thursday in what it called an operation to prevent militants firing homemade rockets into southern Israel.

The pullback came despite a new wave of Palestinian suicide bombings. But after nightfall, eight tanks and several bulldozers entered orchards outside the town and set about razing them to deprive rocket squads of cover, witnesses said.

"Israeli forces have and will continue to operate in this area as long as necessary to protect Israeli citizens," an army spokesman said. Local farmers have suffered many such raids and appealed to militants not to provoke Israeli forces.

Beit Hanoun is in a border area that Israel said it wanted to hand over to Palestinian security control as a proving ground for new moderate Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's commitment to the "road map" peace plan and its requirement to subdue gunmen.

Palestinian security sources said Abbas and his security minister Mohammed Dahlan would tour the Beit Hanoun area on Wednesday to size up the situation and hear residents' concerns.

Talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Saturday deadlocked over who should act first to carry out the road map with its mutual confidence-building measures meant to spawn a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank by 2005.

Aides to Sharon said he planned to meet Abbas again soon, although no date had been set.

(China Daily May 21, 2003)