Last Settlers Evacuated From Gaza

Holding their Torah scrolls aloft and weeping, the last Jewish settlers left the Gaza Strip on Monday, fulfilling Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s vow to end the more than three-decade-old settlement enterprise he had pioneered in the seaside territory.

The residents of Netzarim, numbering at least 500, together with dozens of youthful supporters from outside their community, rolled out of their isolated, heavily guarded enclave for the last time in their customary mode of transport: bulletproof buses, which for years had protected residents against attacks by Palestinian militants.

A convoy of private cars, overstuffed with hastily packed belongings, followed behind.

Even before the last of the settlers walked or were carried from their Gaza homes, thousands of police and soldiers had already been diverted to the northern West Bank for today’s evacuation of two small settlements viewed by Israeli security officials as potentially violent hot spots.

Troops in riot gear, backed by bulldozers, moved in before dawn today.

Hundreds of militant youths have joined a handful of residents in the West Bank settlements of Sanur and Homesh, stockpiling supplies and erecting fortifications similar to those set up by defiant holdouts last week in the Gaza settlement of Kfar Darom.

Netzarim was the last of the 21 Jewish settlements of Gaza to be secured by Israeli troops in a turbulent but methodical military operation that spanned just eight days, including a hiatus for the Jewish Sabbath, a tighter timetable than the weeks-long withdrawal originally envisioned.

By nightfall Monday, the army declared that its mission of removing about 8,500 settlers from Gaza, in Israel’s largest noncombat military operation ever, had been accomplished.

“As of now, there are no Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip,” said Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the commander who oversaw the withdrawal.

Israeli troops will stay on at the settlements for several weeks, securing the area and demolishing settler homes, as agreed in advance, before the territory is turned over to the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinians living in nearby towns and villages watched the emptying of the final settlement in Gaza with immense satisfaction, though from a safe distance. The environs of Netzarim were the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of the nearly five-year Palestinian intifada, which took a heavy toll on civilians and combatants from both sides.

“We are so relieved they are going, because the shooting that happened every minute of our lives will finally stop,” said Walid Alawad of the Palestinian village of Zahara, keeping a wary eye on a nearby Israeli tank.

“We need to see it all gone: no settlers, no soldiers, no tanks, no observation tower,” said his neighbor, Adel Alghoula. “We want nothing more of them to remain.”

The Palestinian Authority hailed the end of what spokeswoman Diana Buttu called the Israeli “colonization” of Gaza.

“We are looking forward to the day that colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem also comes to a close,” she said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas telephoned Sharon on Monday to say he hoped the withdrawal would mark the start of a new chapter between Israelis and Palestinians, the prime minister’s office said.

But Abbas faces challenges of his own. The Palestinian militant group Hamas staged an enormous victory march that wound its way through Gaza City streets within earshot of the settlement. Thousands of followers waved green Hamas flags while loudspeakers raised chants: “Our way is the way of God!”

In Netzarim, arriving Israeli soldiers were greeted with disdain and aggression in some settler homes, but with gentleness and courtesy in others. One settler screamed at a ranking army officer not to dare step over his threshold, but another asked for soldiers’ addresses to send them holiday cards.

As has been a pattern in past days, some settlers busied themselves with everyday tasks even as the eviction was beginning. Ziv Ben-Ari, who lived in Netzarim for 10 years with his wife and six children, mowed his front lawn shortly before the soldiers showed up.

“It’s a sign of continuity and regularity,” he said. “It means even if we are not here, we are still here.”

Nearby, a group of youths defiantly worked on the construction site for a new home, hand-carrying buckets of cement.

Residents had agreed in advance to a quiet evacuation, including solemn farewell prayers at the local synagogue. Last week, synagogues in several Gaza settlements became the settings for melees when holdouts turned them into last bastions, a scenario that settler leaders in Netzarim wanted to avoid.

The settlement, founded in 1972 in a desolate strip of sandy scrubland just south of Gaza City, was among the most vulnerable and remote of the Jewish outposts in the area. Cut off from the main settlement block of Gush Katif, it was reachable by a special corridor road to and from Israel traveled only by armored buses and military convoys.

Critics of the Gaza settlement enterprise saw Netzarim as a prime example of the folly of planting small, difficult-to-defend Jewish communities among more than 1.3 million impoverished and restive Palestinians. The troops guarding the settlement at times outnumbered the residents. More than a dozen soldiers and two civilians were killed at the site during the intifada.

A number of veteran reservists who served at Netzarim memorably complained to an Israeli newspaper that they were treated as “chauffeurs and flak jackets” by the settlers, devoting endless hours to transporting them in and out of the settlement.

But Netzarim’s residents saw persistent Palestinian attacks as proof that their presence served as a shock absorber of sorts for Israel. Sharon once likened the settlement to Israel, with a population vastly outnumbered by enemies.

“The fate of Netzarim is the fate of Tel Aviv,” he told lawmakers in late 2002.

Netzarim’s location near a busy junction meant that convoys of settlers routinely tied up Palestinian travel on Gaza’s main north-south road for hours or even days at a time. Palestinians called the settlement shawka fil halk -- the bone in the throat.

About 65 miles northeast of Gaza, the West Bank settlement of Sanur buzzed with preparations Monday for a last stand.

On the roof of an old British Mandate-era fort, youths laid in food and water, piled sandbags and stacked steel poles. Two teenagers took sledgehammers to the aging minaret of a mosque that dated from the days of Jordanian rule, prior to 1967.

Settlers and activist leaders who have come to oppose the pullout promised stiff resistance, but said they had taken steps to prevent an outbreak of violence feared by military officials.

Local settler leaders and some activists said Monday that they had collected all weapons.

But even the leaders in Sanur conceded that they were concerned about teenage activists, some from West Bank settlements and others associated with the Orthodox Chabad movement, which has spearheaded opposition to the withdrawal.

About 100 young people have flocked to Sanur, swelling the number of people now residing in the enclave to nearly 600. Many of these young people hold extremist views, even refusing to recognize the state of Israel.

A few of the more troublesome teenagers have been expelled by the settlers themselves, but Yoni Matias, a 15-year-old protester, said fears of a chaotic confrontation were overblown.

“We’re going to defend this place without harming any cop or anyone from the evacuation forces,” he said.

The settlement was founded as an artists’ colony but was all but abandoned after fighting between Israel and the Palestinians broke out in late 2000. On Monday, sculptures had been removed from its tiny museum, leaving empty display spaces.

Amid preparations, groups of young men prayed in unison, and children bounced on an inflatable trampoline that was brought in Monday afternoon.

*

Simhi reported from Netzarim and King from Jerusalem. Times staff writer Ken Ellingwood and special correspondent Eyal Bino contributed from Sanur and special correspondent Fayed abu Shammalah from Zahara.