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Last Gaza settlers bid a tearful goodbye

NETZARIM, Gaza Strip - The last Jewish settlers left Gaza on Monday aboard armored buses for Israel, ending decades of turbulent occupation that many called an obstacle to Mideast peace.

Before leaving, the holdouts in Netzarim - one of Gaza's oldest settlements - staged a tearful goodbye procession past abandoned homes, marching behind Torah scrolls and a giant wooden menorah. One family, which says it was overlooked by Israeli troops, was left behind but plans to leave today.

As the Netzarim settlers mourned, thousands of Israeli troops surrounded two settlements in the West Bank, where some 2,000 extremists have holed up with an arsenal of stun grenades, gas canisters and automatic weapons, defying orders to leave.

Troops were due to move into the West Bank settlements after dawn today, the next - and so far riskiest - operation of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to "disengage" from the Palestinians. Many nationalist Israelis say they consider the West Bank to be the heart of the biblical land of Israel.

In a second day of clashes, about 70 extremists tussled with soldiers at the West Bank settlement of Kedumim after staging a protest at a road junction. News reports said 12 people were arrested.

Israeli officers said they were prepared to use less restraint than they did in Gaza if the extremists get out of control in the West Bank.

Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas had a five-minute phone conversation Monday evening to discuss the Israeli pullout, and each expressed their commitment to peace, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. It was their first conversation since a June 21 meeting in Jerusalem.

Separately, Abbas said Israel's unilateral withdrawal was only the first step.

"It's a beginning of the full withdrawal from all the settlements," Abbas told a group of 400 Palestinians disabled in uprisings against Israel.

But Sharon, who concluded that the Gaza settlements were too difficult to defend and that keeping Gaza posed a threat to the Jewish character of Israel, said he intended to keep building Jewish homes in the West Bank.

At a meeting of Parliament's security committee, Sharon said Israel would create territorial contiguity between Israel's internationally recognized border and the areas that house most of the 230,000 West Bank settlers - a plan that likely would expand the West Bank's Jewish population.

International peace negotiators and the Palestinians have said any expansion of West Bank settlements would violate the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, which calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

[Last modified August 23, 2005, 02:45:30]