By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM, May 23 (Reuters) - Israel's removal of about two-dozen settler outposts in the occupied West Bank has become a "central issue" for the current government, Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai said on Saturday.

The United States, Israel's main ally, has put increasing pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to halt all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, part of territory Palestinians want for a future state.

Israel removed five families and razed makeshift homes in the West Bank at the outpost of Maoz Esther on Thursday, close to the Jewish settlement of Kokhav Hashahar, northeast of the Palestinian West Bank city of Ramallah.

In defiance, settlers returned later in the day to try to piece together the flattened wooden structures but Vilnai said the army would prevent all the some 24 outposts being rebuilt.

"Certainly, right now this is a central issue and after we have a discussion we will be able to set a timetable for removal," Vilnai said in an interview on Israel Radio.

Netanyahu met U.S. President Barack Obama for talks at the White House on Monday and the U.S. president afterwards reminded Israel of its commitment under a 2003 U.S.-backed peace "road map" to stop West Bank settlement activity.

The United States and the European Union see all settlement activity as an obstacle to peace and the EU and the World Court have deemed all settlements illegal.

CONSTANT STRUGGLE

Vilnai, a former army general, said that while in the past governments had failed to act decisively to remove outposts, currently there was a will to remove them.

"I admit that there was an ambiguity in the past but now we are unequivocal. We are dealing with it," he said.

Vilnai is a lawmaker in the centre-left Labour party, a coalition partner in Netanyahu's right-leaning coalition. He said that Labour, which is headed by Defence Minister Ehud Barak would not set Netanyahu an ultimatum for removing the outposts.

But he added that the Israeli military, that controls the West Bank, had begun making detailed plans to remove the outposts since Netanyahu's return from Washington on Wednesday.

"We will act according to the arrangements between the army and Netanyahu," he said.

"There is a clear standing order to ... remove every outpost. There is a constant struggle in which we (the army) remove outposts and they (the settlers) return them to build them ... it happens all the time," Vilnai said.

About half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements Israel has built on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, territory in which close to three million Palestinians live.

Palestinians say the settlements, and the "security" barrier the Israel army builds around them, mean confiscation of land. But settlers say Jews have a biblical right to the West Bank. (Editing by Jon Hemming)

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