Israel Begins Gaza Pullout

Israeli troops fanned out in the Jewish settlements of the Gaza Strip before dawn today, engaging in scattered clashes with protesters as they inaugurated a landmark withdrawal from the sliver of seaside territory Israel has occupied for 38 years.

Prayers and lamentations rose into the salt-laden air Sunday in the final hours before soldiers sealed off the strip and began serving Jewish residents with eviction notices.

At the floodlit Kissufim crossing, the main settler entry point to Gaza, troops erected red barriers at midnight emblazoned with the words: “Stop. Entry into the Gaza Strip and presence there is forbidden by law.” Angry protesters lighted bonfires, slashed the tires of army vehicles and blocked the entrance gates to the largest settlement, Neve Dekalim. The army said troops would refrain for now from entering five settlements where residents had made clear soldiers were unwelcome but that the military would go door-to-door telling residents of the remaining 16 settlements that they must leave within 48 hours.

Israeli leaders pledged that the withdrawal from Gaza, the first uprooting of established Jewish communities from land the Palestinians want for their future state, would be carried out in full despite the deep rift the initiative has created among Israelis.

“The settlements must be evacuated; the settlers cannot remain,” Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Sunday, addressing Israeli troops as they made final preparations for the pullout. “I understand there are strong emotions ... but they cannot override a national consensus.” Authorities hope to complete the evacuation of all the Gaza settlements , and four smaller ones in the northern West Bank, by the first week of September. Israeli troops are to leave some weeks later.

While the settlers observed the solemn Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av, a day traditionally devoted to fasting and mourning, Israeli police and soldiers set up an array of roadblocks on highways and dusty back roads in the Negev desert outside Gaza to prevent more anti-pullout protesters from making their way into the settlements.

Up to 5,000 outside activists, including radical young people from West Bank settlements, are already holed up inside Gaza. Authorities believe that they are more likely than settlers actually living in Gaza to offer violent resistance when forced evictions begin early Wednesday.

Palestinian security forces, meanwhile, deployed near the settlements under an arrangement worked out earlier in the day with Israeli commanders -- a process that brought them closer than they had ventured in years to the concrete blast barriers and concertina wire that line the settlement perimeters.

The Palestinian troop presence is meant to help ensure that rejoicing Palestinian civilians do not surge into the settlements, and also to deter rocket and mortar attacks by Palestinian militants.

Outside the isolated settlement of Morag, situated midway between the Palestinian cities of Rafah and Khan Yunis, arriving Palestinian police in blue-and-white uniforms fired celebratory bursts of gunfire into the air and sang nationalist songs. Then they set about building themselves a camp with Palestinian flags flying from every tent pole.

Ordinary Palestinians spoke of their longing to see the settlers gone. “The settlements are suffocating us,” said Mustafa Astal, sweating at a crowded checkpoint near Khan Yunis. “We hope for a better life after they leave.”

At least half of Gaza’s 8,500 settlers remained in the settlements as of Sunday, the eve of troops’ arrival to give them the 48-hour warning to depart. In addition to telling residents they must leave, soldiers are to offer to help them pack and go.

As the stiflingly hot day dragged on, a small but steady flow of settlers made its way out through the Kissufim crossing. Cars towed open-topped trailers piled high with sofas and tables, boxes and bedding.

Others said they wouldn’t depart unless forced. “No one here plans to leave willingly,” said Yaakov Goldberg, who has lived for four years in the settlement of Kfar Darom, which is considered a hard-core stronghold.

Another likely trouble spot is the beach community of Shirat Hayam, where resisters have fortified ramshackle houses and laid in dried food and other provisions meant to withstand a drawn-out siege.

“We’ll do everything we can to stop the soldiers from coming here,” said Datya Itzhaki, who was dressed in black as a sign of mourning. “We see this pullout as harmful to the state of Israel.”

Israeli commanders are quietly worried that young soldiers might be unprepared for the emotional toll of the task ahead.

The army operation is code-named “Brotherly Hand,” and troops are being urged to treat the evacuees with the utmost consideration.

“It’s important that every soldier understand there’s no battle here, there’s no war, we’re not seeking victory, we are not seeking to vanquish anyone,” the army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, told senior commanders on the eve of the withdrawal.

Some anti-pullout organizers urged settler families to find nonviolent ways to weaken the soldiers’ resolve.

The Yediot Aharonot daily said suggestions included presenting a picture of contented domesticity when soldiers knocked at the door: children playing, food cooking on the stove, the father studying Torah.

Other tactics included showing the soldiers children’s drawings, photographing troops while rebuking them for evicting Jews from their homes and switching the nameplates on homes to confuse the arriving troops.

The army’s delicate treatment of residents who offer only passive resistance is unlikely to extend to the outside activists, particularly if they initiate clashes with the troops.

“The handling of provocateurs from the outside will be tough, assertive and violent if necessary,” Ben Caspit, who covers security affairs, wrote in the Maariv daily. “That’s what the police, the [paramilitary] border police and special units are for.”

Even at the eleventh hour, many operational details of the evacuation remained a military secret. Israeli news reports said the final decision on the order of settlements to be taken over by troops would not be made until hours before the deadline for voluntary departures expired early Wednesday.

Inside the settlements, the emotional atmosphere was heightened by observances of Tisha B’Av, a holy day marking the destruction in ancient times of the biblical Jewish temples. Worshipers crowded into the synagogues of the main settlement block of Gush Katif, reciting fervent prayers and psalms of lamentation.

“Tisha B’Av symbolizes destruction, but this time it gives me hope -- hope that the country will awaken to the true meaning of this [withdrawal],” said Dikla Gal-Ed, a 29-year-old teacher from the Gaza settlement of Ganei Tal.

The faithful spent the entire day fasting, neither eating nor drinking despite the heat. Most wore slippers or cloth sneakers in deference to the restrictions against wearing leather shoes.

Hundreds wept unrestrainedly at a ceremony at Gush Katif’s small cemetery, whose 48 graves are to be exhumed later by troops from the army’s rabbinate as part of the withdrawal.

“The creator of us all should be the only one to open these graves for the resurrection,” the rabbi of Neve Dekalim, Yosef El Nekayeh, told the crowd, some of whom prostrated themselves on the cemetery’s sandy ground. “Amen that we won’t have to witness the sight of soldiers disturbing these graves .... We tell our dead to rest in peace until the resurrection.”

In Jerusalem, demonstrators were staging an all-night vigil outside Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office. Earlier in the day, Sharon received a delegation of five senior rabbis who pleaded with him, to no avail, to call off the withdrawal.

The Israeli Cabinet was to meet today to put its final seal of approval on the individual pullouts. The only settlements whose evacuation has formally been approved are Gaza’s three most remote: Netzarim, Kfar Darom and Morag. But they will not necessarily be the first ones forcibly emptied.

On Sunday, a sense of isolation was taking hold. Israeli bus service into the settlements -- a physical and psychological mainstay for the settlers at the height of the Palestinians’ intifada, or uprising -- was halted for the last time.

In Neve Dekalim, the main grocery store’s shelves were stripped nearly bare. In the already abandoned settlement of Peat Sadeh, plastic water bottles rolled along deserted streets, propelled by a scorching wind.

Polls have shown that a solid Israeli majority supports the withdrawal, but the pullout has prompted a wave of soul-searching over the rift between secular Jews and the religiously observant, who make up the overwhelming majority of the anti-pullout forces.

“This time I fear that we may be left with a scar, because the fundamental problems will remain after the withdrawal, on the day after,” Danny Tropper, who heads a group that works for reconciliation of religious and secular, told Israel Radio. “Regardless of all the differences between us, we are a family -- families fight, but remain a family.”

Israel has said it will respond with overwhelming force if settlers and soldiers are fired on during the withdrawal.

On Sunday night, armored personnel carriers rumbled into position outside Neve Dekalim amid the crackle of gunfire believed to have come from Palestinian militants.

A homemade Kassam rocket landed close to the Kissufim junction, but no casualties were reported.

Even if militants fail to mount any serious attacks, the deployment of so many Israeli soldiers and Palestinian troops at close quarters has set nerves on edge. Before dawn Sunday, five Israeli soldiers were hurt in what the army described as a friendly-fire incident.

After gunfire believed to have been from Palestinian gunmen was heard in the area of Kfar Darom, an Israeli tank fired a shell that accidentally hit an Israeli armored personnel carrier.

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Ellingwood reported from Neve Dekalim and King from Jerusalem. Staff writer Shlomi Simhi at Kissufim and special correspondents Fayed abu Shammalah in Khan Yunis and Vita Bekker in Kfar Darom contributed to this report.