MIDDLE EAST: With most of Gaza's Jewish settlers removed from their homes in the first 48 hours of forcible evacuations, Israeli troops yesterday rounded up the diehards who were determined to cling to this occupied land which they believe God promised them.
Settlers barricaded themselves into their gated communities, set abandoned houses ablaze, pelted soldiers and police with eggs and paint, reduced them to tears with abusive language - and one even threatened to shoot them with an M-16 rifle.
The unarmed troops cajoled, negotiated and eventually dragged hundreds of hysterical settlers feet first out of synagogues and homes. Some residents of the small coastal settlement of Shirat Hayam took to the sea to briefly flee evacuating troops, while others from Kfar Darom were lifted from a synagogue rooftop in metal cages by crane.
In what were the most serious clashes of the whole evacuation process, more than 100 people were arrested and 44 troops were slightly injured including 10 soldiers who had acid thrown at them by settlers as they forcibly evacuated Kfar Darom's synagogue. One reservist soldier refused evacuation orders and was removed from the scene and will probably face court martial.
At the end of the second day of forced evictions, the Israeli army estimated that 13 of Gaza's 21 settlements due to be dismantled were empty or almost empty.
The evacuations have gone more swiftly than anticipated and the army hopes to finish the bulk of the operation before the start of the Sabbath today, when the operation will be suspended.
The evictions are part of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw Gaza's 8,000 settlers from occupied land they share with 1.2 million Palestinians, a move he says will ease Israel's security burden and help preserve the country's Jewish character.
In Gaza's largest settlement of Neveh Dekalim, hundreds of unarmed troops yesterday swept into a synagogue where up to 1,000 radical religious settlers, most of them not even residents of the area, had sought sanctuary for a second day.
The atmosphere was relaxed for most of the day, with thirst-quenching fruit-flavoured ice lollies passed out to troops and settlers alike. The synagogue's loudspeakers pumped out the national anthem and the main Jewish prayer said at times of death or danger.
However, after negotiations for their voluntarily departure broke down in the early afternoon, the rowdy settlers were escorted or carried out of the modern concrete structure and loaded on to buses.
The settlers had crammed into the two buildings in the synagogue, one filled with men the other with women. They smeared two entrance ramps in cooking oil to make them slippery and impede the entrance of troops, but the soldiers merely gritted them with sand before rushing into the building.
They carried out the males first, including teenagers who had ripped their T-shirts as a sign of mourning and who flailed wildly as soldiers carted them to buses where they were offered cold water. Older men in white-fringed prayer shawls were simply escorted out, their arms still wrapped in the leather bindings they wear when praying and their scowling faces showing their bitterness of their ejection from a holy place.
Some teenagers boarded the buses clutching bottles filled with sand from the dunes that these communities were built on during 38 years of Israeli occupation. While most of the world considers Gaza's settlements illegal because they are built on occupied land, these settlers say this tract of sand and scrub is their biblical patrimony.
One inconsolable teenager sobbed like a baby, stabbing his finger at police officers who restrained him on the ground and shouting: "You are not a Jew. If you were Jewish you couldn't do what you are doing now."
After the men were evacuated, the female soldiers formed a human corridor which the girls were escorted through, most choosing to walk out slowly, sobbing and emotionally exhausted after their intense teenage battle to change the course of history.
As the girls were still being evacuated last night, a small group gathered behind the podium defying appeals by a community leader asking them to go in an honourable manner after reading psalms together.
An army spokesman, Capt Ari Gottesmann, did not agree that the consideration soldiers have shown to protesters who have insulted soldiers and spiked the wheels of their vehicles was an indication that Israel's army applies a different set of standards for dealing with Jews as opposed to Palestinians.
"When the army is going up against Palestinians, they don't know what to expect; it could be a suicide bomber and that creates a different environment than this one," he said.
America's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that while she felt for evacuated settlers, Israel will be expected to make further concessions that would ultimately lead to an independent Palestinian state.