Israeli occupation troops forcibly removed an outpost in Hebron Thursday which Jewish settlers erected to stake a claim to land near the site of a Palestinian attack which killed 12 settlers and security men. Also in the West Bank, the Israeli occupation army raided the city of Tulkarm and demolished the family home of a Palestinian accused of killing five people at an Israeli kibbutz last month.

Thursday's operations came as the United States counts down to likely military action to disarm Iraq, and seeks to secure Arab support by keeping Israeli-Palestinian fighting contained.

The Israeli occupation army and settlement officials said occupation troops moved in before dawn on several caravans set up without government authorization on the route connecting Hebron with the adjacent settlement of Kiryat Arba, and dismantled them by 0500 GMT.

Under lancing rain, occupation soldiers dragged young settlers out of the prefabricated structures. A group of servicewomen carried an inert female settler between them across the mud, Israeli television footage showed.

A Defense Ministry statement said the caravans constituted "an illegal outpost on private Palestinian land."

Some 200,000 settlers live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip , territories captured in the 1967 Middle East war from Jordan and Egypt and which Palestinians want for a state. Settlers have been a prime target for resistance attacks since a Palestinian uprising for independence erupted in September 2000.

The international community regards the settlements as illegal. Israel disputes this, but does restrict unauthorized settlement expansion. Efforts to enforce this have turned violent in the past.

OUTPOST COMMEMORATED AMBUSH FATALITIES

Israeli media said three settlers were arrested during the Hebron operation for altercations with occupation troops. Police confirmation was not immediately available.

A settlement spokesman said some arrests were made, but described the confrontation as minimal.

"Our people were instructed not to offer any violent resistance, and the dismantling went ahead," the spokesman, Noam Arnon, told Reuters.

Settlers said the outpost was intended to commemorate 12 Israeli occupation soldiers and security men killed nearby in an ambush by the Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad on November 16.

Following that incident, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon  pledged to set up "security corridors" connecting tiny enclaves of settlers in the predominantly Palestinian city.

Under the Israeli plan, secure travel zones would connect the Jewish enclaves, where some 450 settlers live, and the neighboring settlement of Kiryat Arba to the shrine revered by Jews and Muslims as the burial place of the biblical Abraham.

But settlers have demanded they be allowed to build a continuous strip of homes between Kiryat Arba and Jewish holy sites.

In Tulkarm, Palestinian witnesses said some 60 Israeli armored vehicles rolled in overnight, backed by attack helicopters.

Israeli engineers demolished the family apartment of Sirhan Sirhan, a Tulkarm man whose whereabouts are unknown and whom Israel accuses of a November 10 attack on Metzer, an Israeli kibbutz or communal farm, in which five people died.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a Palestinian resistance group linked to President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Palestinian security officials disputed Sirhan's involvement, saying he had no known resistance affiliations.

Palestinian witnesses said Sirhan's father was arrested. It was not immediately clear if he was among five "wanted men" whom an Israeli occupation army spokesman said were detained in the operation.

Israel resorted to home demolitions as a retaliation against Palestinian resistance bombings, saying it aims to deter future such attacks.

Israeli incursions into Palestinian-ruled areas have been commonplace since the outbreak of violence, which has now claimed at least 1,727 Palestinian and 670 Israeli lives.


PHOTO CAPTION

Israeli police stand guard as an occupation soldier dismantles an impromptu settlement set up by some 200 Israelis at the spot where Palestinian resistance men killed 12 occupation soldiers and settlers in November, in the West Bank town of Hebron Thursday Dec. 19, 2002. The unauthorized settlement, named 'Heroes of Hebron', was sited on Palestinian land along a lane used by Jewish worshippers going between shrines in Hebron and the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba. (AP Photo/Oded Balilt