Last Gaza settlement cleared

The evacuation of settlers from the Gaza Strip has been completed, and only one family remains with the permission of the military, a police official said.

The evacuation ended this evening, with the departure of some 600 residents of the Netzarim settlement, the last of 21 to be cleared out.

“I can officially say that all of the Gaza Strip has been evacuated, except for one family that remains with the permission of the army,” said a police spokesman, Avi Zelba.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has called Israel’s Gaza pull-out the start of a full Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian lands.

“Tomorrow they will start leaving part of the West Bank,” Abbas told a group 400 disabled Palestinians wounded in uprisings against Israel.

“It’s a beginning of the full withdrawal from all the settlements. We will not close our eyes, we will not rest until they leave from all our land.”

The last Jewish settlers to be evacuated in the pull-out boarded armoured buses and left for Israel this afternoon, after a farewell march behind Torah scrolls and a massive candelabra, even as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would expand large West Bank settlements.

The settlers left Netzarim in a caravan of buses with Israeli flags poking out of darkened bullet-proof windows and private cars and trucks loaded with belongings. A settlement leader sat in the front of the first bus clutching a Torah.

More than 5,000 troops, meanwhile, headed to two militant West Bank settlements to be evacuated Tuesday. Security forces braced for confrontations, saying some 2,000 ultranationalist youths holed up there planned to resist violently. Security officials said militants had hoarded stun grenades and tear gas canisters, and planned to hurl burning tires onto rivers of cooking oil.

In Netzarim, the 600 residents of the farming community, one of Gaza’s first settlements, put up no fight after reaching an agreement with the military on a quiet departure, in contrast to the struggle put up last week in Neve Dekalim and Kfar Darom.

“It’s tougher to see them go quietly, not fighting,” Dotan said, watching the tearful and resigned settlers board the convoy.

But two young men and a woman barricaded themselves in a house, in a last act of resistance. Police punched a hole through the door and dragged them out by their limbs, wriggling and struggling.

The settlers were driving to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest shrine, and from there to temporary homes in a West Bank settlement.

“I’m leaving Netzarim today with my head up,” said a 23-year-old woman who identified herself as Pnina. “I have completed my assignment with success,” she said, adding with sarcasm that she would have liked to see Sharon personally lower the flag since he “managed to expel Jews”.

Around midday, hundreds crowded the synagogue for final prayers. After the ceremony, the residents chanted and prayed as they walked behind a Jewish candelabra, or menorah, and several Torah scrolls in a farewell tour.

Some residents found solace in continuing with their everyday lives. Workers poured concrete to create a foundation for the roof of the Meshulami family’s new house.

Evacuated settlers who refused to believe that Sharon would carry out his plan to evacuate Gaza found themselves homeless, and set up tent cities on vacant Israeli land near Gaza’s borders. Signs at the perimeters called them ”refugee camps”.

In one camp, settlers set up small shrines with photographs of relatives who were killed in Palestinian violence. Folding beds were wheeled into the large white tents, for what could be a long stay until they find new housing.

Netzarim, on the outskirts of Gaza City, has been the target of frequent attacks by Palestinian militants and was one of the coastal strip’s most hard-line and isolated settlements.

Israeli troops guarding the settlement have also clashed with Palestinians, including teenage stone throwers, at a nearby junction. Throughout the past five years of fighting, an entire army battalion, or about 550 soldiers, guarded Netzarim – or about one soldier per settler.

Palestinians living near Netzarim said they were counting the hours to see the settlers go.

“They are very bad neighbours,” said Saadi Helo, 44, a Palestinian farmer. “They turned our lives into nightmares. They occupied the land, levelled our farms, demolished our houses, killed our beloved and spared no effort to attack us.”

Forces began evacuating the 21 Gaza settlements last week, more than a year after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon concluded Israel could no longer defend its 38-year-old occupation of the coastal strip, which Palestinians claim as part of a future state.

In Jerusalem, Sharon told parliament’s security committee that Egypt will send a top envoy to Israel next week to work out details of handing over responsibility for the southern border crossing to Egypt, Israel Radio reported. He said Israel will invest 50 million shekels (€1m) to develop checkpoints for traffic between Israel and Palestinian areas.

As troops prepared to wrap up the Israeli withdrawals, displaced settlers from Gaza were setting up two tent camps just outside the coastal strip Monday to protest what they said was the government’s failure to provide alternate housing, Army Radio said. Sharon has called the establishment of tent camps a political ploy to create sympathy, and insists there’s ample compensation and housing for evacuated settlers.

The pullout from Gaza and four small West Bank settlements is sure to reshape Mideast peace efforts in unpredictable ways. After the settlements are completely evacuated and knocked down, Israel is to turn Gaza over to Palestinian control for the first time.

But while Palestinians and others in the international community are pushing for a quick renewal of talks, Sharon conditioned progress on a halt to Palestinian violence, and said Israel would continue building in the West Bank, where most of its more than 240,000 settlers live.

Speaking to evacuating troops yesterday, Sharon said there would be no further unilateral withdrawals. The next step would be a return to the stalled internationally backed ”road map” peace plan, he said – if his conditions were fulfilled.

“In order to move to the road map, terrorism must stop – terrorism, violence, incitement – terror organisations must be dismantled, their weapons confiscated, serious reforms carried out,” Sharon said.

A senior government official confirmed a Jerusalem Post newspaper report quoting Sharon as saying Israel would continue to build in the West Bank – a policy that has put him into conflict with the US He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to comment on policy matters.

The newspaper quoted Sharon as saying the Ariel bloc, near Tel Aviv, “will remain a part of Israel forever, connected territorially to Israel.” The Maaleh Adumim bloc outside Jerusalem, he said, “will continue to grow and be connected to Jerusalem”.

Sharon has said he hopes the Gaza pullout will help Israel hold on to the settlement blocs in any future peace deal. The future of Jewish settlements outside those blocs, where far fewer Israelis live, is less certain.

The forcible evacuations in Gaza have proceeded far more quickly than expected, and with relatively little violence.

That could change as the evacuation operation turns northward to the West Bank. Residents have already pulled out of two of the four settlements to be emptied, but as many as 2,000 right-wing extremists – most non-residents – have holed up in the two others, Sanur and Homesh. Some 5,500 forces were to be deployed to those settlements to carry out the evacuations, police spokesman Avi Zelba said.

Palestinian security forces in the area of the settlements were deploying to prevent militant attacks during the pullout, Palestinian officials said.