NABLUS, West Bank, October 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Hundreds of Israeli troops and hard line Jewish settlers clashed for a second day Sunday, October 20, just outside the Palestinian city of Nablus, as the army tried to dismantle a rogue settler outpost.

Troops and police battled for hours to evacuate hundreds of settlers refusing to allow the tiny settlement of Havat Gilad to be broken up, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The security forces forced youths down from rooftops of makeshift buildings and caravans, dragging them down the hill on top of which the unauthorized (illegal) settlement is built.

However, even as they dragged some off, scores more were rushing to the site, threatening to overwhelm the security forces.

Dozens of settlers threw themselves in front of a bus into which some 50 of their colleagues had been bundled by the army to stop it leaving the site.

Israel army radio said eight soldiers and a policeman were hurt in the clashes.

Around 50 people were hurt in 24 hours since the operation to dismantle the settlement - one of 24 slated for demolition - started.

The army destroyed a greenhouse and a small building serving as a synagogue after dragging off a caravan.

"The security forces will not manage to break the spiritual forces at Havat Gilad," the settlers there said in a statement. The security forces would be better deployed against "terrorists", they added.

By nightfall, settler sources said the army had pulled back, having removed several makeshift buildings but without having evacuated all the settlers.

They said there were still several hundred people on the site, and army radio said they started to rebuild the destroyed structures during the night.

Israel's chief rabbi Israel Meir Lau denounced their fight against the forces of law and order.

It is forbidden to raise one's hand against a soldier or a policeman to oppose legal actions," he said on the radio, calling on the settlers to resort to "legal methods to defend every inch of Eretz Israel," the so-called biblical land of Israel, including the Palestinian occupied West Bank.

The Israeli chief of staff, General Moshe Yaalon, said in a statement he would investigate an order to send in the troops during the weekly religious day of rest, the Shabbat.

The order was slammed by the National Religious Party, the ultra-nationalist group representing the settlers in the national unity government, which threatened to quit the coalition in protest.

Settlers also attacked Palestinian farmers in the northern West Bank over the weekend, firing at them and at Israeli peace activists trying to afford them some protection after one was shot dead by settlers earlier this month.

Despite a night and day of clashes, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said he would dismantle more of the unauthorized communities.

"The army wants to impose respect for the law and is out there to defend the legal settlements ... there are still two or three wildcat settlements to evacuate, and we'll push through to the end," he told public radio.

"The young settlers who opposed the dismantling during the night of Havat Gilad went crazy. Nobody is controlling them, not even their rabbis, and that has to end. This is a rebellion against the authorities," he said.