Ginnot Arieh, West Bank ? Insisting they are bound to the land, Jewish settlers living in this tiny cluster of trailers said Monday the government would have to forcibly remove them from their homes if it carried out a decision to tear down their outpost.

Pulling down the unauthorized settlements that dot hilltops throughout the West Bank is a key element of the U.S-backed “road map” peace plan, which Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accepted — with reservations — in June.

Soon after, soldiers dismantled a few of the more than 100 outposts, but momentum fizzled as the peace process bogged down and Palestinians ignored the road map requirement that they disarm militant groups.

Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz agreed Sunday to order four of the outposts — three of them uninhabited — dismantled in the coming days. One of the three, Havat Shaked, has been evacuated several times before but rebuilt each time.

The fourth is Ginnot Arieh, about four miles northeast of the Palestinian city of Ramallah and home to some 25 settlers.

Dismantling uninhabited outposts is convenient for the government, because it minimizes the threat of confrontation with settlers. Still, some settlers defend even uninhabited areas, because they see them as the kernel of future settlements.

The Defense Ministry would not say when exactly the outposts would be taken down, but the military said the commander overseeing the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinski, signed an order Monday for their removal.

One resident of Ginnot Arieh said he would never abandon the stony hills where he lives.

“God says ‘live here’ — and that’s it,” said Pinchas Yamin, 27, a religious Jew and disc jockey at a settler radio station. “I won’t leave alive. If a soldier wants, he can take me, but not alive. This is my home.”

Israeli settlers walk down a road past mobile homes in the unauthorized West Bank Jewish outpost Ginnot Arieh, below the settlement seen on the hill in the background. Settlers living in this tiny cluster of trailers said Monday that the government would have to forcibly remove them from their homes if it carried out a decision to tear down their outpost.

Oren Rund, secretary of the outpost, said thousands of settlers would flock here if soldiers tried to force them off the land.

The unauthorized outposts — none of which house more than a few dozen families, and many of which are unpopulated — are widely viewed as a separate issue from the 150 established West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements where some 220,000 Israelis live.

Past efforts to remove outposts have led to hourslong standoffs between soldiers and radical settlers that sometimes ended in scuffles and protesters being dragged off.

Such scenes, played out before TV cameras, are calculated to underscore the difficulty any government would have in removing settlers.