RAMALLAH, West Bank'Israeli tanks clanked out of the center of two major West Bank towns Sunday as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared \we have finished this stage' of the military operation and Palestinians said they found the buildings occupied by Israeli soldiers ransacked, vandalized and looted.
Israeli troops left Ramallah and Nablus, which they had entered March 29 for what Sharon called an effort to root out ""terrorist infrastructure"" following a series of suicide bombings in Israel. However, soldiers Sunday remained positioned around Palestinian chief Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah offices, and in a cordon around nearly 200 Palestinians, among them armed fighters, holed up in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem.
Sharon, in brief comments Sunday, said of the larger military drive, ""We have achieved very profound results but the struggle against terrorism continues."" He added that ""now it will employ a different method"" but did not elaborate.
Israel television Sunday night suggested the army might now rely on raids into Palestinian towns to find specific people rather than broad incursions that marked this campaign. Israel lost 29 soldiers in the operation. The Palestinian death toll is still unknown, but some Palestinians have estimated hundreds were killed. Israel detained 4,000 Palestinians and about 1,500 are still in custody.
The incursions left thousands of Palestinians homeless, creating what aid workers described as a ""humanitarian disaster.""
Sharon and his representative say the effort has succeeded in at least reducing the suicide attacks and has netted dozens of radical Palestinian activists. But Palestinians say the humiliation and anger created will only lead to more frustrated Palestinians who volunteer to die for their cause.The razed center of the Jenin refugee camp, where bodies are still being recovered from the rubble, has become a potent symbol of that anger.
In the departure of the troops from Nablus and Ramallah Sunday, residents say they found a new spark to their fury. In dozens of buildings that had been taken over by the Israeli army, Palestinians said they found the soldiers committed vandalism and theft. They said the destruction had no military justification.
Hours after the troops had left, reporters in the center of Ramallah, saw building after building damaged or sacked. Similar reports came from Palestinians in Nablus, the largest West Bank city, after troops withdrew from there.
