Israeli Settlers Gone From Gaza

The last Jewish settlers to be evacuated from Gaza boarded armored buses and left for Israel on Monday, after a farewell march behind Torah scrolls and a massive menorah.

As the historic Gaza withdrawal neared completion — and Israeli troops prepared to evacuate four settlements in the West Bank — Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would expand other large West Bank communities.

The settlers left Netzarim in a caravan of buses, with Israeli flags poking out of darkened, bulletproof windows, and private cars and trucks loaded with belongings. A settlement leader clutched a Torah as he sat in the front of the first bus to depart.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel 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, said senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. It was their first conversation since a June 21 meeting in Jerusalem.

The Gaza pullout represents the first time Israel is abandoning territory claimed by the Palestinians for their future state.

The settlers from Netzarim will be housed in the student dormitories of the Academic College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel. Only a third of the rooms are occupied during the school's summer semester. Professor Miriam Billig, who helped make the arrangements, told the Jerusalem Post she realized the Netzarim settlers had a strong sense of community and wanted to stay together.

There were approximately 100 religious families and 600 residents in Netzarim, a farming community and one of Gaza's first settlements — which is why its residents asked to be evacuated last. About 2,500 soldiers and police arrived Monday in the intense heat there.

The settlers there were not expected to put up a fight after reaching an agreement with the military on a quiet departure. After midday prayers, the residents were to drive out of Gaza in more than 30 armored buses and head to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest shrine.

With the evacuations of all 21 Gaza settlements is complete, reports CBS News Correspondent Robert Berger, they will be demolished before the territory is turned over to the Palestinian Authority.

Netzarim was an isolated settlement, just two miles from Gaza City and next to the Nusirat refugee camp. It has had frequent attacks by Palestinians.

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.

The substance poured on troops by pullout foes barricaded on the roof of the Kfar Darom synagogue last week has been identified as caustic soda, similar to liquid drain cleaner, police officials told the Web site of Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's biggest newspaper.

Three youths who had come to Netzarim to resist the evacuation were arrested Sunday in possession of metal spikes, oil, barbed wire and paint, said the police commander in charge of the evacuation, Hagai Dotan.

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.

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.
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 on Sunday, 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 organizations 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 U.S. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized 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.

Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra said officials would exhibit no tolerance for people who take on evacuation forces.

"We hope that most of the weapons (in Homesh and Sanur) have been collected," Ezra told Israel Radio on Monday. "We will deal with people with zero tolerance and all those who try to face off with the army will ultimately find themselves in jail."