The Israeli occupation army has announced its withdrawal from two more Jewish settlements, thus completing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's pullout from the Gaza Strip and a small corner of the northern West Bank.

The army withdrew from the West Bank settlements of Ganim and Kadim - the first two enclaves to be declared evacuated in August - on Tuesday evening, the military said in a statement.

It pulled out of the nearby settlement of Sanour on Monday and Homesh last week.

On 23 August, Sanour and Homesh became the last enclaves to be evacuated of Jewish settlers under Sharon's pullout plan.

Israeli military sources have stressed that unlike the Gaza Strip, the area evacuated in the northern West Bank will remain under Israeli control, with soldiers continuing to patrol the district. 

Hundreds of Palestinians swarmed into the evacuated Jewish settlement of Sanour in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, after Israeli troops withdrew without an official handover. 

"They left without coordinating with us. We therefore headed to the area with around 100 security service personnel," mayor of Jenin, Qadura Mussa said.

Quartet: Disarm Palestinian fighters

International peace brokers have urged the Palestinian Authority to start dismantling armed resistance factions before a parliamentary election in January.

United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations stopped short of backing Israeli demands that the group Hamas be barred from the polls unless it disarms and amends a charter calling for Israel's destruction. 

Ministers of the so-called Quartet said in a statement after talks at UN headquarters that the Palestinians should maintain law and order after Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, a pullout completed on 12 September after 38 years of occupation.

The Quartet, borrowing terminology from a Middle East peace road map it has sponsored, also urged the Palestinian Authority to "dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure".

Cautious Abbas

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said that forcibly disarming powerful resistance groups would lead to civil war, and that he prefers to co-opt them into the security services and mainstream politics.

At a news conference on behalf of the group, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that " those who want to be part of the political process should not engage in armed group or militia activities, for there is a fundamental contradiction between such activities and the building of a democratic state."  

Hamas is widely expected to make a strong showing at the polls at the expense of Abbas' mainstream Fatah faction, an outcome likely to harden Israel's resolve not to resume talks on Palestinian statehood until he cracks down on the resistance fighters.  

A UN official at the meeting said the Quartet was "walking a fine line" over disarming before the elections because they did not think Abbas was strong enough to take on the task.

Disappointment
Mustafa al-Barghouthi, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Aljazeera from Ram Allah that Palestinians were disappointed at the Quartet's statement, which he described as being "similar to the Israeli position in many points". 

"First, the Quartet talks about an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while what has happened in Gaza is only redeployment.

"The statement has not mentioned the necessity of freedom of movement, border crossing, and the release of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons," he said. 

"Second, the statement has not set a mechanism to continue negotiations. We hoped it would call for an international conference. It has hardly called for experts meeting in Moscow," he added.

"Third, it has positively responded to the Israeli calls of placing conditions for participation in the Palestinian elections," al-Barghouthi said. 

He also criticised the statement for adopting the Israeli viewpoint regarding armed groups which may be interpreted by Israelis as a green light to interfere in Palestinian domestic affairs.

Israel may then intervene in the Palestinian electoral process, which should be a purely Palestinian process, he said. 

"We do not allow any external side to intervene in these elections," he added.

"Palestinians are the only ones allowed to carry out these democratic elections," he said.

PHOTO CAPTION

Palestinian children celebrate in the evacuated Jewish settlement of Ganim in the northern West Bank after Israeli troops left the settlement. (AFP)