ISRAEL: The orange marching season has come to Israel, but instead of bowler hats and Lambeg drums, the marchers are wearing Jewish skullcaps, waving Israeli flags and pushing buggies.
Thousands of right-wing demonstrators have for the second day defied a police ban and taken to the road, adopting the colour orange as the shade of their opposition to Israel's planned evacuation of all 8,000 Jewish settlers from the occupied Gaza Strip next month.
The orange marchers taking part in a three-day, 25km journey towards the Gaza settlements have faced a wall of khaki and blue uniforms, as the police and army have turned out in their thousands to prevent the crowds from attempting to enter the coastal strip's main Gush Katif settlement bloc.
Gaza's 21 Jewish settlements have been declared a closed military zone to prevent ultranationalists from attempting to disrupt the planned evacuation.
Police said they would prevent the protesters from approaching the Kissufim crossing to the settlements, where there were clashes between police and right-wing demonstrators last weekend.
At sunset last night police used handcuffs to seal the metal gates to the rural farming community of Kfar Maimon about 15km (nine miles) to the east of Kissufim where the protesters spent yesterday after camping there the previous night.
Sixteen people were arrested and several injured when protesters shouting "Police state" tried to push through the cordon.
Police said the protesters could go no farther than Kfar Maimon, and urged them to go home, but Benzi Lieberman, a leader of the settlers' council organising the march said: "We will reach Gush Katif, we will stay here and fight for as many nights as it takes."
But while police and soldiers encircling the agricultural community gathered in the parched grass for their evening rations last night, more protesters were arriving.
As standoffs go, this one has so far been good-humoured; demonstrators spent the day milling around, praying or listening to political rallies, lolling under the shade of trees in the intense heat.
The orange-flavoured ice lollies at the ice-cream vans were selling out fast and children were treating the event as a camping holiday.
The crowd, which police said was 6,000, but organisers claimed was 15,000, was mostly religious Israelis, including families with young children, as well as teenagers.
The Shlosberg family from the West Bank settlement of Dolev said they were craving a shower after spending a night in their tent in Kfar Maimon.
"This move will not bring peace, but just the opposite. We will give them settlements, and they give us more terror, and the government doesn't do anything," said Yael Shlosberg (48), a schoolteacher.
She was referring to the recent barrage of rockets directed by Palestinian militants in Gaza at Israeli homes.
She defended the settlement enterprise, widely viewed as illegal under international law, as a biblical right.
"The Jewish nation came back after 2,000 years to our country after the Holocaust, and we have to establish ourselves here," she said.
Apiryon Zvi (58), a school administrator, was in Kfar Maimon with one of his six children. "I'm ashamed of our government because it's acting against the interests of the Jewish people," he said. "The disengagement is in the interests of the Arabs."
Palestinians who wanted the land which the settlers are evacuating as part of a future state could have autonomy or belong to Jordan, but should not have their own state.
"I think Jews are better rulers that, for example, Saddam Hussein or Assad. We are humane. But this is our country and it is not less important to us than Arab countries are to them.
"It is also the promise of God. The Arabs have many countries, but we have nowhere except Israel.
"We believe in our power as a nation more than our government believes in our power as a nation."
Opinion polls show most Israelis support the Gaza pull-out from land which Palestinians want for a future state, with the international community seeing it as a chance to revive talks on the stalled road map for peace.
However, the withdrawal has angered right-wingers, who say Israel is giving away their biblical birthright and rewarding Palestinian violence in a gesture which will not bring peace.