March to Gaza Is Blocked

About 20,000 Israeli police and soldiers blocked thousands of Jewish settlers and their supporters from marching Monday night to protest Israel’s planned pullout from the Gaza Strip next month.

The marchers started out after a rally here, but a line of soldiers and police stopped them soon afterward. Forming a sea of orange, their protest color, the settlers shouted at the security forces to disobey their orders. No violence was reported.

After a two-hour standoff, settlers said they had reached an agreement with forces to spend the night in Kfar Maimon, a village two miles from their starting point and 12 miles from their goal: the main crossing point into the Gaza settlements.

Thousands of police and soldiers lined roads between Netivot and the Kissufim crossing, prepared to stop a march that police commissioner Moshe Karadi had declared illegal.

Almost all the protesters were Orthodox Jews, reflecting the religious backing of the opposition to the removal of all 21 settlements from Gaza and four from the West Bank, set to begin in mid-August. Rabbis say no Israeli government has the right to relinquish control of any part of biblical Israel.

In keeping with Orthodox custom, a long blue tarp separated men and women at the rally. Teenagers and parents, pushing strollers or carrying children on their shoulders, stood in the sun, chanting prayers.

Police also fanned out across the country to prevent people from boarding buses headed for the demonstration. Nearly 100 demonstrators waited for buses that never came. About a dozen started walking toward Gaza, more than 60 miles away.

Also Monday, Egyptian mediators held talks in Gaza with Palestinian militants to try to rescue a 5-month-old informal cease-fire after a violent weekend. Some progress was apparent, as Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks subsided.

But Palestinian medics said Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 14-year-old boy near an Israeli settlement. The military said soldiers fired in front of cars trying to run a roadblock and did not see pedestrians.