MIDDLE EAST: Israel's Jewish settlers were yesterday evacuated from their villa homes in occupied Gaza, God's chosen people expelled from land they believe is their biblical inheritance but which their prime minister has decided they must leave after almost four decades of occupation. Nuala Haughey in Neveh Dekalim
The first day of the massive operation to evict thousands of hardline settlers who had refused to leave voluntarily proceeded swiftly and without major incident. Unarmed soldiers dealt sensitively with distraught residents, some of whom were carried out of their houses sobbing and screaming.
With emotions running high over the withdrawal plan, a Jewish settler grabbed a gun and shot dead three Palestinians in the West Bank yesterday afternoon, provoking fears of Palestinian unrest.
Within hours of the shooting, Palestinian militants fired a mortar towards Gaza's settlements, causing no injuries. Later, Israeli soldiers said that they had carried out a controlled explosion on a bomb-belt discovered in the Palestinian enclave of Al Muasi, adjacent to Gaza's settlements. Four people were arrested.
By last night, the Israeli army said that about 60 per cent of Gaza's 8,000 settlers had left the strip. Six of its 21 settlements were said to have been totally evacuated and four others were almost empty.
All of Gaza's settlements, plus four of the 120 in the West Bank, are due to be dismantled in the coming weeks under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to "disengage" from the region's 3.8 million stateless Palestinians.
Throughout yesterday, on almost every street in the main Gaza settlement of Neveh Dekalim, there were emotional scenes as Israeli troops, many with tears in their eyes, were forced to politely evict fellow nationals, who decades ago were encouraged by the state to colonise occupied land which will in weeks be handed back to the strip's 1.2 million Palestinians.
Some settlers were dignified and simply walked out of their homes, allowing soldiers and police to carry their belongings to air-conditioned buses, which transported them to temporary accommodation inside Israel.
Others refused to prepare for their departure and put their pain and anger on public display. They hectored the young conscript soldiers, urging them to refuse to obey orders, taking photographs of them in an attempt to shame them, and sending out their children, who wore yellow stars and held their hands in the air in a gesture meant to evoke memories of a Holocaust-era photograph of Jewish children being rounded up by Nazi soldiers.
A number of protesters took to the red tiled roofs of their buildings, waving Israeli flags and singing nationalistic songs, while others trashed the insides of the homes they were leaving and covered the walls with graffiti.
In some settlements soldiers faced resistance from residents and opponents of the pull-out plan. Settlers scuffled with police and briefly barricaded themselves into synagogues before being removed after negotiations with community leaders. Amid sporadic violence, a woman soldier was lightly wounded when she was stabbed with a transfusion needle.
In a televised address later, Mr Sharon urged settlers to show restraint, declaring that opponents of the disengagement plan should "not hurt them, rather hurt me".
A 60-year-old West Bank settler opposed to the pull-out suffered severe burns after she set herself on fire at a checkpoint outside the strip.
In the main Gaza settlement of Neveh Dekalim, police rounded up scores of radical religious teenagers who had infiltrated the area in recent weeks. Last night, hundreds of youths rallied at the main synagogue, where they have been sleeping for the past few days, praying and singing the song some Jews sang on their way to the Nazi death camps.
In the Bakshi household, the women of the family pinned to their chests orange Stars of David and screamed hysterically at the police and soldiers who knocked on their door shortly after lunchtime to inform them that they had to leave. "We want to live here," shouted Efrat Bakshi, the mother of seven children. "If all the soldiers break up, maybe this idea will be cancelled."
The soldiers and police, who had undergone intense training for the operation, showed great patience and courtesy, despite being screamed at by settlers who feel that Mr Sharon's plan is a betrayal of their biblical birthright and a reward for Palestinian violence.
There was no immediate indication of the motive for yesterday's West Bank shooting, which drew swift threats of reprisal from Palestinian militants, who have been observing a de facto ceasefire for the past six months. The attacker was named as Asher Weisgan (38), who stole a guard's weapon in an industrial zone in the Shiloh settlement. Nearly two weeks ago, a religious army deserter trying to disrupt the pull-out shot dead four Israeli Arabs on board a bus in northern Israel.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged his people not to retaliate, saying that the attack was meant to sabotage the Gaza pull-out. Mr Sharon called it a "Jewish terror act".
Mr Sharon says that the historic precedent of uprooting the Gaza settlements is vital to Israel's demographic survival as a Jewish and democratic state.