The thought of having Jewish settler homes demolished on his watch has propelled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to promise a radical _ some say ludicrous _ way to sidestep a Supreme Court order to raze 30 apartments built illegally in the West Bank. 
 
 Jewish settlers have a last photo taken in their empty house after it was evacuated by movers employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry, in the Ulpana neighborhood in the West bank Jewish settlement of... (Associated Press) 
 
 Jewish settlers and movers employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry carry out belongings from settler's apartment in the Ulpana neighborhood in the West bank Jewish settlement of Beit El, near Ramallah,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Jewish settlers pray in front of their houses in the Ulpana neighborhood in the West bank Jewish settlement of Beit El, near Ramallah, Tuesday, June. 26, 2012. Israel has started on Tuesday to evacuate... (Associated Press) 
 
 Two Jewish settlers watch as movers, not seen, employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry carry out furniture from an apartment in the Ulpana neighborhood in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Bet El, near... (Associated Press) 
 
 Jewish settlers watch as movers employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry carry out belongings from settler's apartment in the Ulpana neighborhood in the West bank Jewish settlement of Beit El, near Ramallah,... (Associated Press) 
 
 After it evacuates settlers from five apartment buildings in the Ulpana outpost this week, the government has promised to slice the structures from their foundations and move them to a West Bank site nearby, where they will be reassembled. 
 
 Construction specialists say transplanting the buildings _ three-story concrete structures faced with stone and topped with red tile roofs _ would squander huge sums of money and be infinitely more complicated than destroying and rebuilding them. 
 
 Netanyahu came up with the plan after the government was ordered to dismantle the outpost. People close to the prime minister say he believes that preserving the homes will ease the pain for the families. 
 
 The Israeli Supreme Court ordered the government earlier this year to destroy Ulpana after determining it was built on privately owned Palestinian land. 
 
 "By the first of July, the plan is to have the buildings vacated and sealed," a government official said this week, speaking on condition of anonymity about a project whose details have not been finalized. "The prime minister said he wanted these buildings relocated, not destroyed." 
 
 The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war, as part of a future state. The Palestinians, along with virtually all of the international community, consider all Israeli settlements to be illegal or illegitimate. 
 
 In Israel, any talk of uprooting settlements, now home to more than 500,000 Israelis, is contentious. The government divides the settlements into two categories _ those it authorized and those it did not. There are more than 100 authorized settlements and another 100 or so unauthorized outposts, some little more than a few trailers on a hilltop and others, like Ulpana, made up of concrete apartment houses. 
 
 Most settlers do not make that distinction, opposing demolition of any Israeli structure in the West Bank. 
 
 The unusual Ulpana arrangement is an attempt by the pro-settler Netanyahu to avert the prospect of destroying a settlement and battling its residents, who started packing their belongings and moving out of the buildings on Tuesday. 
 
 Transplanting the buildings would solve that problem, but at a staggering cost, experts say. 
 
 Specialists familiar with this type of operation say it would require slicing the buildings with huge circular blades, chopping them into smaller pieces, transferring them by crane to massive flatbed trucks and hauling them to their new location, where they would be reassembled like a puzzle. The sawing alone would take a week for each building and cost $125,000 for apiece for the five structures, said one of the specialists, speaking on condition of anonymity because final plans for the project have not yet been set. 
 
 That expense would just be the starter. 
 
 "Sawing is not the problem. The problem is how to put them together again," because the slicing would cut through electrical wires, plumbing, structural rods and other parts of the apartment, forcing a large-scale reconstruction, said Israel David, vice chairman of the Israeli Association of Construction and Infrastructure Engineers. 
 
 "It's absurd," he said, estimating that total costs could go as high as $25 million to relocate 30 apartments that could be rebuilt for $150,000 apiece. 
 
 The technique has been used in Israel before. In 2005, Israel moved five historic homes in the center of Tel Aviv to widen a road. 
 
 Shay Tzadik, a 20-year veteran of the sawing business, said he appreciates the sentiment behind what Netanyahu is trying to do, but thinks it's beside the point. 
 
 "If it was an archaeological site, it would be worth the investment," Tzadik said. "But why do it?" 
 
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 Blake Sobczak contributed reporting from Ulpana. ||||| “This is a black day for us,” said Amir Dana, a father of five, as cranes lifted furniture out of the homes. “This is a moral and legal injustice, but we’re peaceful people. None of us wanted a fight among brothers and a confrontation with police and soldiers.” 
 
 Like the other evacuees, he wore a black T-shirt that said, “Expelled from my home. We’ll be back.” 
 
 The scenes contrasted sharply with previous evictions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in which settlers put up passive or active resistance. The Ulpana settlers, who are religiously observant, said they complied with the directive of a prominent rabbi at Beit El, Zalman Melamed, who counseled them to avoid a violent confrontation. 
 
 Militant settlers who have violently resisted other evictions were not in evidence at Beit El on Tuesday, although vandals torched a mosque in a Palestinian village this month, leaving behind graffiti promising “war” over the Ulpana evictions. Some families said they would have to be carried out when their turn for evacuation comes later this week. 
 
 Netanyahu, who reluctantly complied with the court order and blocked a bill sponsored by right-wing legislators to retroactively legalize building on private Palestinian land, has promised to construct 300 more homes in Beit El to compensate for the evacuation. He has also pledged to dismantle and relocate the five emptied apartment buildings, rather than raze them. 
 
 That process cannot be completed by July 1, the deadline set by the court for demolishing the buildings, and the government on Tuesday requested an extension until mid-November. 
 
 Michael Sfard, an attorney for the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din who represented the Palestinian landowners, said that despite the evacuation, the government was defying the court ruling, because the buildings would not be removed in time. 
 
 “The government doesn’t think it’s subject to the law,” Sfard said. “They are creating a fait accompli and spitting in the face of the Supreme Court.” 
 
 The Palestinian landowners, from the village of Dura al-Qara, next to Beit El, are unlikely to gain access to their property anytime soon, because the area remains fenced off as part of the settlement. Other homes in the Ulpana neighborhood are built on land not covered by the court decision and will remain in place. 
 
 Banners and graffiti near the evacuated buildings denounced Netanyahu and echoed the slogan of settlers evacuated from the Gaza Strip when Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005: “A Jew does not expel a Jew.” A handmade sign left on the door of an empty apartment said: “The Shimshi family lived here, until it was expelled.” 
 
 Carrying her child as she walked by the buildings, Yiska Fattal said she and other evacuees were worried that their removal might set a precedent for evictions at other settlements. 
 
 “There’s a danger that other homes will be destroyed in the same way; that’s our biggest fear,” she said. 
 
 Two other settler outposts built on private Palestinian land also are slated for removal in the coming weeks under similar court orders. 
 
 Unpacking as workers moved boxes and furniture into her new prefab home, Tehiya Ahituv said the state-funded accommodations were cold comfort. “It’s like someone takes your child and says, ‘You have another one,’ ” she said. “What’s hard is that they’re evacuating part of the Land of Israel.”
– In stark contrast to earlier evictions, dozens of Jewish settlers ordered to leave their homes in the West Bank yesterday did so peacefully. Israel is in the process of evacuating the Ulpana outpost on the orders of its Supreme Court, which determined that five apartment blocks had been illegally built on private Palestinian land, reports the Washington Post. The Ulpana settlers, who were moved to prefabricated homes on a nearby military outpost, said a prominent rabbi had advised them to avoid confrontation with the military. "This is not a happy day for Israel," one departing resident said. "To leave a house is very simple, but to leave a home is very difficult." Several other evictions based on similar court orders are expected to take place over the next few weeks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the court order by vowing to build 850 new apartments in the West Bank to replace the 30 emptied units. He has also promised to uproot the five apartment blocks from their foundations and move them to another location, although engineers say doing so would be expensive and impractical, AP notes.