Israel moves to clear remaining Gaza settlements
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-08-21 16:43

KATIF, Gaza Strip, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Israeli forces marched into three Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, hoping to complete on Sunday the evacuation of the biggest bloc of enclaves in the occupied territory.

Confrontation loomed as several hundred young radicals, reinforcing dozens of settler families that defied last week's army directive to leave, awaited troops sent to remove them.

Protesters set fire to bales of hay, tyres and wooden crates at the main entrance to the settlement of Katif. Dozens of soldiers ignored the barricade, which belched black smoke into the clear summer sky, and entered through a nearby fence.

Katif settler Haim Ben-Arieh said he hoped for divine intervention to stop a withdrawal from land to which many settlers stake a biblical claim and where Palestinians want to build a state.

"The great miracle can happen here, in Katif, with God's help," said Ben-Arieh, a religious Jew.

Ari Katz, a 37-year-old settler in Katif, said: "The struggle will continue for the rest of our holy land."

President Mahmoud Abbas decreed the Palestinian Authority would take over all the Gaza settlements as the Israelis withdraw under Sharon's plan to disengage from conflict with the Palestinians.

Only four of Gaza's 21 settlements remain after forced evacuations last week in which settlers were carried weeping from homes and protesters tussled with troops who pulled them screaming from synagogues.

"There was a very severe phenomenon of the infiltrators and it seems some of them did things I would define as wild acts that I think border on crimes," said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, referring to youngsters who slipped into settlements.

FINAL APPROVAL

Sharon spoke at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in which ministers were expected to formally approve the final phase of the pullout, the evacuation starting on Tuesday of two of 120 settlements Israel has built in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians welcome the removal of the 8,500 Gaza settlers and another 500 from the West Bank, but fear Israel aims to keep most of the other settlements housing 230,000 settlers forever. Some 2.4 million Palestinians live in the West Bank.

The World Court says Jewish settlements are illegal. Israel disputes this.

Shortly after troops went into Katif, contingents of unarmed soldiers entered Atzmona, a farming community of several hundred people, and Slav, where most residents have left. In Atzmona, negotiations were under way to arrange a peaceful evacuation.

The three enclaves were the last remaining inhabited Jewish settlements in the Gush Katif bloc, which Israeli security officials said they hoped to declare evacuated by day's end.

Netzarim, an isolated settlement near Gaza City, is due to be emptied on Monday. With Palestinian agreement, Israeli forces are due to start full-scale demolition of evacuated settler homes on Sunday.

More than 85 percent of Gaza's settlers have gone, but resistance has been reinforced by ultranationalists like those who made stands last week at Neve Dekalim, the biggest settlement, and Kfar Darom, an outlying religious outpost.

Israeli rightists say the pullout is a victory for Palestinian militants, a view echoed by the gunmen, and fear that uprooting Gaza's settlements sets a precedent for further moves out of much bigger Israeli enclaves in the West Bank.

Evacuations have gone more than twice as fast as officials had predicted, but Sanur and Homesh in the West Bank -- where many religious Jews feel an even closer biblical bond than in Gaza -- are seen as potential flashpoints.

Hundreds of rightist Israelis from the most radical West Bank settlements are believed to have moved into Sanur.

Outside one of Atzmona's red-roofed homes, opponents of the withdrawal constructed a cardboard "Cemetery of the Oppressors". Two of the mock gravestones bore the names of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and Yasser Arafat, the late Palestinian president.

"It is clear that we have no chance against (Israeli troops) and the game is up but we are here today to symbolically protest against the pullout," said Meir Bar-Zeev, an 18-year-old West Bank settler who joined protesters in Katif.

Opinion polls show most Israelis favour leaving Gaza and saw it as too costly to keep defending the settlers who lived there alongside 1.4 million Palestinians.