Jeers, Then Cheers as Israelis Withdraw : West Bank: The last pullout of the year comes in an emotional Ramallah, the city that is expected to be Arafat’s base.

For the final time this year, Israeli troops hauled down their flag and pulled out of a West Bank city Wednesday, ducking a hail of stones as their jeeps speeded out of the town expected to become Yasser Arafat’s West Bank base.

The pullout from Ramallah leaves Arafat’s forces in control of seven of the West Bank’s eight Palestinian cities and about 400 villages.

Israel still controls the bulk of West Bank territory, including more than 100 Jewish settlements and large tracts of undeveloped land, and in some areas, including many Palestinian villages, it retains “overall responsibility” for security. But Arafat’s Palestinian Authority is in charge of the daily lives of Palestinians.

The complex and partial nature of the Israeli withdrawal seemed irrelevant to the celebrating Ramallans.

For years, a barricade of spiraling concertina wire has blocked the road leading to the Israeli police station in Ramallah. On Wednesday afternoon, a crush of Palestinians surged over the hated wire as the last four jeeps pulled away. They jeered at the departing troops and then erupted in a wild display of joy as the Palestinian flag was raised on the rooftop of the police building.

“Yesterday Bethlehem, today Ramallah!” shouted Marwan Barguthi, the West Bank secretary-general of Fatah, largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Flanked by gun-waving, blue-uniformed Palestinian police, Barguthi promised the crowd that the police station would no longer be a building inspiring fear.

“This street, this building where many of you and your children were tortured--this is now your property. This street where you were denied access is now open, thanks to you, to your struggle,” Barguthi told the cheering audience below.

In the crowd, 22-year-old Imad Arra said he has been traveling from town to town in the West Bank, witnessing with growing delight the pullout of Israeli troops and the deployment of Palestinian police in their place.

“I am from Janin, and I watched it there, then I watched it in Nablus and now in Ramallah,” Arra said. “I wanted to see how each city celebrated. Here, in Ramallah, which will be the center for the sulta [the Palestinian Authority], the feeling is more intense. There is more excitement than anywhere else.”

Less than two hours later, the Israelis abandoned their military headquarters in Ramallah and officially ended their 28-year-occupation with a brief ceremony.

“We want from you complete security in the city of Ramallah so that the Jews of Psgaot can sleep in peace,” Maj. Gen. Gabi Ofir, the Israeli West Bank commander, said to his Palestinian counterpart, Haj Ismail Jabr. Psgaot is a neighborhood of northern Jerusalem that lies just south of Ramallah.

After the Israelis left, 21-year-old Saed Khalil stood in the crowded courtyard and confronted his personal ghosts. Khalil, a Ramallah native, said that shortly before Israel and the PLO signed their September 1993 peace accord, he spent 18 days in prison tents set up in the courtyard. He was arrested on suspicion of membership in Fatah, he said.

“You can’t imagine what I am feeling right now,” he said. “After hours of interrogation, when they used to send me back to the tents, I would imagine that one day they would be inside and I would be outside.” Khalil said that Israel’s partial withdrawal is not an ideal solution to the conflict but that he can live with it.

“So they are not inside the prison cells or the tents, but at least they’re gone,” he said.

Khalil and others said there is unfinished business to attend to before they are completely satisfied with Israel’s withdrawal. Israel has agreed to free 1,100 more Palestinian prisoners--possibly next week--to allow them to participate in elections scheduled for Jan. 20. But several thousand more will be left behind, and their fate is likely to be a major issue in the election campaign.

The Palestinians say the inmates are all political prisoners and should all be freed. But the Israelis will not grant early release to Palestinians who have killed or wounded Israelis.

And there is still one Palestinian town, Hebron, where Israeli troops will remain until the end of March. Hebron is the only West Bank town with a Jewish population. About 400 Jewish settlers live in the heart of the ancient city, where both Muslims and Jews believe their joint patriarch, Abraham, is buried.

Even after the Israelis partially pull out of Hebron, the army will still guard the settlers living there. Control of the city will be divided, with the Palestinians in charge in some areas, the Israelis ruling other areas and the two forces sharing control in some spots.

The Palestinians fully control all other West Bank cities, including Jericho, Janin, Tulkarm, Kalqilya, Nablus and Bethlehem.

Israel and the Palestinians are scheduled to start negotiating core issues in May, including sovereignty over the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem; the fate of Palestinian refugees; control over water and other natural resources; and the future of the Jewish settlements. The Israelis are committed to carrying out another withdrawal in July, although the extent of that withdrawal is still to be negotiated.

Of all the cities the Israelis have handed back to the Palestinians in the past two months, Ramallah is one of the most affluent. Just eight miles north of Jerusalem, its commercial streets are lined with shops that sell imported Italian clothes and gold jewelry. Many of its residents have spent years in the United States, and many live there and send money back to their extended families.

Its side streets are lined with graceful stone homes with walled gardens. The city boasts excellent private schools where many of the Palestinian elite attended primary school.

Before Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Ramallah was a vacation spot for Palestinians. And Jordanians would routinely make the two-hour drive from Amman, their capital, for dinner in one of Ramallah’s garden restaurants.

During the intifada, or Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, Ramallah was the scene of frequent clashes between troops and demonstrators. The resulting economic downturn hurt its bustling commercial district, and the absence of any local government left its streets dirty and clogged with traffic, its parks neglected. Graffiti scarred storefronts and public buildings.

Since the PLO signed its 1993 accord with Israel, however, Ramallah has enjoyed a building boom. Anticipating Arafat’s relocation of most of his ministries and his own offices to Ramallah, investors have thrown up buildings all over town.

Its proximity to Jerusalem, its mixed population of Muslims and Christians, its reputation as a relatively tolerant town and center for Palestinian intellectuals and political activists all make Ramallah a far more attractive home than the impoverished and deeply conservative Gaza Strip for the men and women who followed Arafat here from exile in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, and other Arab and European cities.

On Wednesday, the newly cleaned streets smelled of wet paint as merchants hurriedly slapped a fresh coat of gray on their storefronts, covering fading anti-Israeli graffiti.

Vendors sold cotton candy and corn on the cob to the crowds who window-shopped as they strolled.

Arafat is expected to visit here Monday. Banners are strung everywhere, welcoming Arafat by his nom de guerre, Abu Ammar, and praising him as a “symbol of the struggle.”

Summer Assad of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.