Gaza settlers dragged out

Israeli troops dragged settlers screaming and sobbing from homes and synagogues yesterday, beginning a forced evacuation of Gaza settlements after nearly four decades of occupation.

With emotions at fever pitch over implementation of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan, a Jewish settler grabbed a gun from a security guard and killed three Palestinian labourers in a West Bank settlement.

Thousands of unarmed soldiers marched house to house in Gaza's Jewish enclaves, ordering people out and in some cases breaking down doors when they refused. Police grabbed protesters off the streets and pushed them into waiting buses.

A 60-year-old West Bank settler woman opposed to the pull-out set herself on fire at a checkpoint outside the Gaza Strip, suffering burns over 60 per cent of her body. Ultranationalist Israelis see the West Bank and Gaza Strip as land bequeathed to the Jews by God.

One woman wept and shouted, "I don't want to! I don't want to!" as four female soldiers, each grabbing a limb, carried her out of her home in Neve Dekalim, the largest Gaza settlement.

In one synagogue, radical youths who had slipped into the main settlement bloc sang the haunting melody some Jews sang on their way to Nazi gas chambers.

But elsewhere there were signs of settlers resigning themselves to evacuation as they hugged soldiers before filing quietly onto buses taking them to Israel. Some troops and police broke into tears as they pulled families from their homes.

The operation, the culmination of Mr Sharon's plan for the first removal of settlements from land Palestinians want for a state, began after a midnight deadline for the remaining Gaza settlers to leave or face eviction.

Officials said by late afternoon more than 60 per cent of Gaza's 8,500 residents had left or been evicted and evacuation was going faster than expected and could be over in two days.

Palestinians, who see settlements as the most hated symbol of occupation, watched and cheered from nearby rooftops.

Mr Sharon, once the settlers' champion but now reviled by them as a traitor, voiced sympathy for the evacuees in a televised address. He urged them to blame him alone and not attack troops.

"I am responsible for this. Attack me," said Mr Sharon, who has billed his plan as "disengagement" from conflict with the Palestinians.

But the Gaza pull-out could be complicated by the West Bank shooting spree, which drew threats of revenge from Palestinian militants mostly inactive during the withdrawal.

President Mahmoud Abbas urged Palestinians not to retaliate, branding it "a terrorist incident" meant to sabotage the Gaza pull-out. Mr Sharon called it a "Jewish terror act".

The United States, the traditional broker in Middle East peacemaking, condemned the attack and urged everyone to avoid actions that might exacerbate tensions. Police said the assailant, a driver, was taking Palestinian workers to jobs in the Shiloh settlement when he forced a security guard at knifepoint to hand over his gun and turned it on the occupants of his car. The gunman was later arrested.

There was no immediate word on the motive for the shooting. Nearly two weeks ago, a religious army deserter trying to disrupt the pull-out shot dead four Israeli Arabs aboard a bus in northern Israel.

Confrontation loomed as forces fanning out among the red-roofed villas of Neve Dekalim became locked in a standoff with hundreds of radical youths holed up in the synagogue.

"Guys, why are you doing this?" cried a man named Yehuda who stood on his rooftop in his old military uniform in the Morag settlement after troops, accompanied by bulldozers, marched in.

Smoke from tyre and rubbish fires billowed over the area. After a standoff at Morag's synagogue, soldiers carried away worshippers wrapped in prayer shawls and still chanting dirges.

Residents of 21 settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank had been given 48 hours to evacuate or be removed. More than 50,000 police and soldiers were deployed in Israel's largest military operation other than in wartime.

Mr Sharon appears willing to gamble on a historic precedent of uprooting Gaza settlements for what he says is a move vital to Israel's demographic survival as a Jewish and democratic state.

Analysts say he hopes to relieve international pressure for further pullbacks from the occupied West Bank, where the vast majority of Israel's 240,000 settlers live.