Israel Defense Ministry moving crews on Tuesday transferred the belongings of the first 16 out of 33 families due to be evicted by July 1 from five disputed apartment buildings on a West Bank settlement near Ramallah.

"The families living in the Ulpana neighborhood in Bet El started moving this morning, with the assistance of the Defense Ministry to the temporary neighborhood specially set up for them," read an official statement.

In March, the Supreme Court ruled that the buildings in question, built a decade ago, along with nine others, were constructed on private Palestinian land, and ordered their evacuation and demolition.

While the ministry said "the operation is being carried out in full coordination, and with the agreement of community leaders and the residents themselves," local spokesmen said several would passively resist the eviction.

Binyamin Regional Council spokesman Miri Maoz Ovadia told Xinhua on Tuesday that several residents said they were being forced out of their homes and not going voluntarily.

"They're not leaving their houses by their own free will -- they were forced to leave," she said, quoting the residents, adding, "but will use no violence against the forces that will be evacuating them."

The ministry assigned over 100 employees and contractors to carry out the move, with each family being accompanied by a team, which officials said would provide full "assistance to the families during the operation, and during their integration into the temporary neighborhood." Meanwhile, Bet El's community rabbi, Zalman Melamed, who led an early morning prayer service outside the site, along with dozens of the town's residents, promised that the government's vow to build 300 apartments on other uncontested land within the village as compensation would be kept.

"God willing, there will be an even bigger neighborhood here. We will return to these homes and the land of Israel will be rebuilt," Melamed told the worshippers, according to the Ynet news site.

Melamed said that a new neighborhood would be inaugurated later in the day at the alternate temporary housing site at a defunct Border Police base alongside Bet El "on a plot that is 2.5 or three times larger than this one," according to Israel National News.

The remaining 17 families are to be evacuated on Thursday, and all of them will be housed in some 40 portable trailers, dubbed " caravillas," until either new housing is built, or the sealed up homes are physically moved to a new site, as the government hopes.

While security forces were in the vicinity to quell any violence against moving teams, or potential so-called "price-tag" vandalism attacks, Ovadia said the event was carried out peacefully.

"Melamed gathered the youth that was there and instructed them that, although this evacuation is very, very painful, they should not act with any violence against the (security) forces," she said.

As well, she noted that residents took down a number of small protest tents erected nearby over the last two weeks, and the youth cleared tires and other makeshift barricades, meant to thwart the removals.