The Washington Post

BETHLEHEM, West Bank Palestinians here and in neighboring Beit Jala awakened yesterday to find the Israeli army gone from their streets, but their joy at the predawn pullout was tempered by the devastation inflicted by 11 days of street fighting.

From refugee camps to affluent neighborhoods, residents started the painful task of digging out and rebuilding. Merchants swept up piles of glass and bullet casings and put their wares back on display. Housewives salvaged what they could from homes that had been shelled or burned. Children went back to school and parents back to work for the first time since troops thrust deep into the towns after Palestinians assassinated an Israeli Cabinet minister Oct. 17.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that Israel withdrew from the towns after the Palestinian Authority agreed to block militias from firing on the nearby Jewish neighborhood of Gilo, which Israel considers part of Jerusalem. "If it succeeds, we"ll continue," Ben-Eliezer told reporters.

Israel launched its widest military operation in years in Palestinian-controlled territory after Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi was assassinated in a Jerusalem hotel by gunmen from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Israeli troops entered six major West Bank cities after the government demanded that the Palestinian Authority arrest Zeevi"s killers and hand them over to Israel. More than 40 Palestinians, including many civilians, died in the fighting that erupted after the incursion began. The army has called the operation a success because it was able to arrest, kill or wound dozens of wanted militants and thwart planned attacks on Israelis. But the Palestinian Authority still has not complied with the demand to arrest Zeevi"s killers and extradite them.

The Bush administration has pushed Israel to withdraw immediately from all the occupied areas, but Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said that he will pull troops out one city at a time, leaving each community only after fighting there stops and the Palestinian Authority agrees to impose order. Israeli troops and tanks remain in the West Bank towns of Jenin, Kalkilya, Tulkarm and Ramallah.

Palestinian officials praised fighters in Bethlehem on Sunday for resisting the Israeli troops. But the town where Christians believe Jesus was born paid a high price for the street warfare that raged there. Palestinians say that 23 people, most of them civilians, died in the fighting in Bethlehem and Beit Jala. Dozens more were wounded. The two communities suffered tens of millions of dollars in property losses, according to Palestinian estimates.

There was more rubble than honor evident in Bethlehem yesterday. Streets that just two years ago received thorough face lifts in anticipation of millennium celebrations now are littered with cars and lampposts crushed by tanks and armored personnel carriers. Several blocks of Manger Street, the main shopping boulevard, suffered heavy damage.

Some stores were destroyed in the fighting, and apartments built above them were pocked with bullet holes. One hotel, the Paradise, was reduced to a burned-out shell.

In Azza refugee camp across from the Paradise, several homes were badly damaged or destroyed by direct hits from tank shells and heavy machine-gun fire.

In Azza, as in other refugee camps, temporary shelters built by the United Nations over the years have been replaced by permanent homes refugees have built, including multiple-story apartment buildings that house large extended families.