Clock Ticking For Israeli Pullout

Israeli authorities set up roadblocks across southern Israel and cut off bus service to Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip on Sunday as they began final preparations to begin dismantling all 21 settlements inside Gaza and four others in the northern West Bank.

Israeli troops were to seal off the Gaza settlements at midnight Sunday to begin the withdrawal, the first time Israel will pull out of land Palestinians want for a future state. Two days later, soldiers will begin forcibly removing those of the 8,500 Jewish settlers still remaining.

About 55,000 Israeli troops and police are expected to take part in the pullout. Some of the forces will remove the settlers from their homes, others will prevent protesters from interfering and still others will protect the troops and settlers from attacks by Palestinian militants trying to create the impression they are driving the Israelis out.

Israeli and Palestinian commanders held their final security coordination meeting Sunday, exchanging maps of troop placements in preparation for the deployment of 7,500 Palestinian troops along the outskirts of the Gaza settlements.

CBS News Correspondent Teri Okita reports Palestinian security forces are on their highest alert, trying to prevent militant attacks while warning demonstrators to stop taunting Jewish settlers.

The Israelis and Palestinians also opened a joint operations center on the Gaza border to help them respond rapidly to any violence, Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said. Israel has promised to retaliate harshly if fired on during the pullout.

The pullout might have to be interrupted if Israeli troops come under Palestinian fire, the Israeli army chief said Sunday. "I do not plan to continue the process with the same intensity, without stopping to see if the fire is of a kind that we have to deal with immediately," the army chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, told reporters.

As of Sunday, thousands of residents -- reinforced by an estimated 4,000 visitors from outside Gaza -- remained inside the settlements, vowing to resist their eviction. Other opponents of the pullout have threatened to hold massive demonstrations against the plan and to run the roadblock on the Gaza border to create chaos and torpedo the plan.

Police spokesman Avi Zelba said that authorities set up a cordon of roadblocks in southern Israel on Sunday to prevent the opponents from interfering with the pullout. Only residents of southern Israel and those with a legitimate reason for being there will be allowed to cross, police said.

Vice Premier Shimon Peres gave a pep talk to troops stationed near the Gaza border, telling them their coming task was crucial to protecting Israel's democracy.

"The settlements must be evacuated they cannot stay here," he told reporters. "I understand that there are feelings. I have sympathy (for the settlers), but they cannot replace a national choice."

Settlers also made last-minute preparations of their own. Settler leaders sent out instructions on how to break the morale of soldiers sent to carry out the eviction orders, according to the Yediot Ahronot daily.

The settlers were told to give the soldiers children's drawings and to take pictures of the troops, telling them that history will remember them for their crimes, according to Yediot.

Settlers also planned to seal off their communities early Monday to prevent soldiers from delivering eviction notices.

The army closed the checkpoint into the Gush Katif cluster of settlements in southern Gaza to everyone but residents weeks ago, but thousands of protesters still managed to infiltrate. The army said Sunday that as many as 4,000 disengagement opponents might be inside the settlements; Settlers said the figure was much higher.

"I think that's a sign that a lot of soldiers are also protesting in their way by letting people come in," said Anita Tucker, a resident of the Netzer Hazani settlement.

Brig. Gen. Dan Harel, the military commander in charge of the pullout, said the infiltrators would have no impact on the pullout.

"They won't prevent us from carrying out the disengagement at the time, moment and way that we see fit," he told Army Radio.

Meanwhile, hundreds of settlers gathered at the Gush Katif cemetery singing traditional prayers of redemption as part of a ceremony commemorating the Tisha B'Av holy day marking the destruction of the Jewish Temples. The cemetery's 49 graves are to be moved as part of the pullout.

Police had expected large crowds Sunday at the Western Wall, the Jewish holy site in Jerusalem, as a sign of protest during the Tisha B'Av fast day. However, the crowds were smaller than feared, possibly because of the August heat.

Israel's Islamic Movement called on Muslims to gather at the adjacent Haram a Sharif, the disputed holy site claimed by both Muslims and Jews, to protect it. Thousands of police were sent to the area to prevent a possible outbreak of violence between Arabs and Jews, police said.

Early Sunday, five Israeli solders were wounded, one of them seriously, by friendly fire after Palestinian gunmen shot at Kfar Darom, an isolated settlement bordering the Palestinian town of Deir el-Balah. Troops arrived at one of the buildings used by the gunmen as an Israeli tank shot a shell at it, wounding the five soldiers, the army said.