Letter from Jerusalem: Charity rubber wristbands may be all the rage in Europe, but in this corner of the Middle East the summer craze is for bright orange ribbons.
At traffic junctions religious Jewish teenagers in long frumpy skirts are selling bright orange scraps of fabric, a symbol of opposition to the government's summer plan to evacuate some 7,000 Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip.
Tens of thousands of motorists have tied the ribbons to the antennas of their cars, while settlement residents bind them to their clothing and children attach them to their schoolbags.
As the mid-August deadline for the start of the evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements looms, the anti- disengagement lobby plans to step up its protests and civil disobedience activities.
Israel will be tangoed, literally.
Pro-settler activists have vowed to "paint the country orange" and over the weekend (of July 12th), hundreds of students who are members of the "Orange Cell" group tied tens of thousands of orange ribbons on car antennas in Tel Aviv along with leaflets expounding their cause.
With religious right-wingers threatening to use violence to defy the pull-out, the army is preparing its largest ever peacetime operation and the Shin Bet security service is shifting its attention to Jewish extremists, instead of Palestinian militants.
The prospect of Jews evicting other Jews from the sand dunes of the Gaza Strip has stirred strong emotions among settlers and their supporters, who believe that Jews are the sole inheritors of the entire biblical land of Israel.
Right-wing rabbis have urged army reservists not to serve during the disengagement period and even blessed young people who engage in protests such as blocking highways in the centre of the country with burning tyres.
In the past few weeks, disengagement opponents whom police suspect were teenagers, super- glued shut the doors of some post offices, courts and other public buildings and blocked rail traffic by placing large rocks on the train tracks with a sign reading "A Jew does not expel a Jew."
Such activities only antagonise ordinary secular Israelis, most of whom support disengagement, and diminishes sympathy for the settlers' fight against being uprooted.
However, two polls released last week, one by Israel's public radio station and the other by a political talk show on Israeli television, showed that support for the pull-out has dropped to about 50 per cent from two-thirds of Israelis just a few months ago.
This dip in public support may be due to a recent spate of criticism of the disengagement project, which the US and Europe hope will kick-start Israeli- Palestinian peace initiatives.
Along with the orange ribbons, demonstrators are also passing out fliers quoting Israeli doves who have predicted that withdrawal will only strengthen the Islamic militant group Hamas and spark a new round of Palestinian violence.
The country's outgoing army chief, Lieut-Gen Moshe Yaalon, warned recently in interviews with major newspapers that Israel would face an onslaught of suicide bombings and rocket attacks by Palestinian militants after its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip unless it undertook further pull- outs in the West Bank.
In what appears to be a counter- offensive in the battle for the public's hearts and minds, the recently retired head of the Shin Bet security service, Avi Dichter, told the same newspapers last weekend that he supported the disengagement from Gaza and did not believe that it would worsen Israel's security situation. He also expressed worry about Jewish terrorists, including Jewish suicide bombers, who might try to disrupt it.
Some Israelis may genuinely be starting to question whether leaving Gaza will make them safer, a perspective which is partly fuelled by a recent spasm of recent rocket attacks by militant groups in Gaza at towns inside Israel.
But the public may also be getting jittery over concerns that the government is not as prepared for this massive military and logistical operation of removing and rehousing the settlers as it is letting on. The head of the National Security Council, Maj Gen Giora Eiland, recently distributed a document to offices dealing with the disengagement, warning that the state of preparedness is "vague, to say the least".
As the summer of disengagement heats us, left-wing supporters of the plan seem to have been outrun by their opponents. There were reports that a coalition of left-wing groups tried to counter the orange ribbon phenomenon by introducing green ribbons, but these are nowhere to be seen.
The Gaza settlers say the choice of the colour orange is a combination of the yellow of the sun and the golden sand of the beaches and represents optimism and hope.
So what does colour analysis say of their selection? According to the fabric online website, orange is the colour of practicality and creativity.
"Your energy levels are high and you are sometimes restless. You have a forceful will and tend to be active and competitive. You are also excitable and can seek domination over the others."
But the same site also cautions that "bright orange and burnt orange can make you feel frustrated and blocked. Try wearing peach, which will direct your energy to the others in a more caring way."