Settlers opposing pullout erect new Gaza outpost

GUSH KATIF, Gaza Strip - Rightist Jews established a new Gaza outpost yesterday at a site where Israeli troops clashed with settlers while razing buildings to prepare for withdrawal from the occupied territory.

Sunday's flareup, in which 20 people were injured and one soldier was arrested for refusing orders to take part in the demolition, was a foretaste of turmoil feared when Israel begins to carry out the planned pullout from Gaza in August.

The United States is counting on the pullout to foster talks on a "road map" to Israeli-Palestinian peace. But a recent spate of violations has frayed a four-month-old ceasefire.

Witnesses said 30 defiant Jewish nationalists moved into an abandoned holiday cottage and planted a flag on the roof close to the ruins of 11 other old bungalows bulldozed on Sunday on the beach opposite the Gush Katif settlement bloc.

"We have proven that the army cannot kick Jews off their land. The government has made a tactical mistake. It began the struggle 50 days too early. We will wear it down," rightist leader Aryeh Yitzhaki told reporters at the site.

"We can bring hundreds more civilians here to continue building on the land. There won't be any (pullout)."

Israel's military declined comment on what it would do about the new outpost by the Mediterranean sea, where opponents of the pullout have been refurbishing and moving into derelict cottages and an old resort hotel to use as bastions against evacuation.

As part of an escalating protest campaign, settlers and supporters vowed to bring Israel to a halt at Monday's evening rush hour by having pedestrians and motorists pause to consider the justification for "disengagement".

"NO FUTURE IN GAZA", PERES SAYS

But Vice Premier Shimon Peres said settlers had "no future in Gaza. Whatever is happening now is a passing experience and they will be out (of Gaza) in accordance with decisions of the parliament and cabinet," he told Reuters.

"We know we are going to have some problems in our way to achieving (the withdrawal), but it won't be stopped and won't be changed," said Peres.

Polls show most Israelis support the plan to scrap all 21 settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank - the first uprooting of Jews from occupied land that Palestinians want for an independent state.

Israeli authorities fear that a recent influx of rightists into the Gaza enclaves housing 8,500 settlers could complicate the evacuation and heighten the risk of violence.

Gush Katif council spokesman Avner Shimoni vowed the demolitions would not sap opposition to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to "disengage" from bloodshed with Palestinians.

"The tension here is great," he said on Israel Radio. "The people who want to reach us will do so whether or not they take down one or many abandoned buildings."

Many settlers believe land they are supposed to leave was given to the Jews by their God, and that abandoning it would be to capitulate to the Palestinian revolt that began in 2000.

Some Israeli commentators criticised the government for not sealing off the beach area before demolishing the buildings and for not explaining its actions.

"The army succeeded yesterday in carrying out a military mission but disengagement foes won from the standpoint of public consciousness. The government was mute," analyst Alex Fishman wrote in Israel's biggest daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

On Sunday, young ultranationalists lay in front of bulldozers or clambered onto them to try to foil the demolition, chanting, "Jews don't expel Jews." Soldiers and police dragged them away kicking and screaming.

The army had destroyed 11 of the 21 cottages when settler protesters arrived. The buildings, little more than barren hulks, had been holiday homes for Egyptian army officers before Israel captured Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war.

- REUTERS