Israel’s West Bank Pullout to Begin Within a Week : Mideast: Foreign minister’s remarks are first to discuss timing of redeployment, which will start in north and move south. National mood is tense.

Israel will begin its pullout from West Bank towns and villages within a week by handing over some administrative offices in villages to the Palestinian Authority, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told Israel Radio in remarks broadcast Sunday.

Israeli and Palestinian officers are set to meet this week, after the Jewish fasting day of Yom Kippur (which begins at sundown Tuesday), to coordinate each stage of the Israeli army’s redeployment out of West Bank population centers. Both sides said the army will start its withdrawal from cities by leaving Janin in the north next month.

“Then we will start from north to south. And I am afraid of the difficulties in implementation, but I am even more afraid of what would happen if we didn’t do it,” Peres said.

To Jewish settlers, Peres’ remarks--the first announcement by an Israeli official on when and where redeployment will begin--were like a red flag being waved in front of them.

Some leaders of the settler movement, representing 120,000 Jews in the West Bank, have vowed that they will respond to each phase of redeployment by launching widespread acts of civil disobedience.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin returned from the United States to find the national mood tense as West Bank redeployment becomes a reality. The army announced that it is extending a closure imposed on the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday, hours before Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed their latest accord in Washington, at least through this Thursday and possibly until mid-October, after the Jewish High Holy Days end.

Yigal Pressler, the prime minister’s terrorism adviser, asked the public to be alert when riding public transportation and said that intelligence services expect an attack by Islamic militants in the coming days in response to the signing of the latest accord.

Rabin also found settlers and parliamentary opposition parties seething over last week’s agreement, which mandates Israel’s troop pullout, the expansion of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and the holding of Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza.

“All that was now signed in Washington is null and void, dust in the wind, like a passing shadow, like a nightmare,” said Elyakim Haetzni, a militant ideologue of the settler movement.

Israel plans to hand over four administrative offices--two in northern West Bank villages and two in southern villages--within a week, and it will hand over four more in the next six months, said Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel’s coordinator of activities in the occupied territories, Ilan Shahor. There are 14 such offices throughout the West Bank, and they have long been hated symbols of the occupation for Palestinians.

Palestinians may rejoice at the first real sign of an Israeli pullback, but Jewish settlers are grimly preparing to oppose it. Maj. Gen. Ilan Biran, head of Israel’s central command, is due to meet settler leaders today to explain each step of redeployment. But neither the government nor the settlers believe that Biran’s meeting will reassure the settlers.

Settlers who oppose the redeployment are counting on an expected release of about 2,300 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails to convince the majority of Israelis that the latest agreement poses a security risk to the entire nation.

Responding to the growing public sentiment against the release, President Ezer Weizman has strongly hinted that he may refuse to pardon three Palestinian female prisoners among the 28 women held in Israeli jails. The women were convicted for participating in attacks in which Jews were killed.

As many as 1,300 Palestinians are expected to be released from Israeli jails by the end of the week. An additional 1,000 are to be released when Israel completes its pullout from West Bank towns and villages in March. All those who will be released are to be allowed to return to their homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Settler leaders and the opposition Likud Party argue that many of the prisoners slated for release are unrepentant and that once West Bank cities are under Palestinian control, they may serve as havens for anyone who decides to attack Israelis.

Both Palestinians and settlers are demonstrating in protest of the accord.

Sunday morning, more than 100 Jewish settlers from the Jordan Valley blocked a main access road to the Allenby Bridge, which crosses the Jordan River and links the West Bank to Jordan. The settlers said they will return every day to protest the expansion of the Jericho self-rule area.