MIDDLE EAST: Israeli police and troops surrounded the Gaza Strip last night to prevent any last effort by right-wing Jewish demonstrators to infiltrate the occupied territory in an attempt to scupper this month's withdrawal of settlers.
Several thousand ultranationalists gathered for a rally at a stadium in the Israeli town of Sderot near the Gaza border to demonstrate against the planned pull-out.
Settler leaders vowed last night that thousands of protesters would march today to the Gaza frontier and attempt to enter the strip's main settlement.
However, police insisted the demonstrators would not be allowed to enter any of the strip's 21 settlements, which have been sealed off to non-residents in advance of the evacuation due to begin a fortnight. A buffer force of up to 15,000 police and soldiers was in place last night to challenge any attempt to enter Gaza.
Israeli public security minister Gideon Ezra said he hoped the Yesha Council of Jewish settlements which organised last night's rally would back down, as it did last month after police foiled a similar march on Gaza. Organisers said police allowed some 500 buses to ferry protesters to the rally.
The demonstrators, mostly religious Jews, say the plan to evacuate all 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza's settlements and a further 700 from four of the West Bank's 120 settlements betrays Jewish claims to biblical land and rewards the Palestinian uprising or intifada now in its fifth year.
Polls show that a narrow majority of Israelis support the pull-out plan.
Palestinians welcome any withdrawal from land captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-day War, but fear the Gaza plan is a ruse to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank.
The pull-out affects some 9,000 settlers, fewer than 4 per cent of the 240,000 who live alongside 3.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The US and Europe hope the withdrawal will lead to a renewal of long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
An international think-tank warned yesterday that Israel's West Bank barrier, and settlement expansion around the holy city, could choke Arab East Jerusalem and anger Palestinians there who have generally avoided armed conflict.
A report by the International Crisis Group said settlement and barrier construction risked "planting the seeds of future confrontation".
"Current activity around Jerusalem to link up Jewish West Bank settlements to East Jerusalem will not only undermine chances for a viable two-state solution, but create an explosive mix that will imperil the very security Israel states it is trying to guarantee," said Mr Robert Malley, the group's Middle East programme chief who wrote the report.