Last of the settlers leave without a fight

Israeli forces moved through burning barricades to remove dozens more young disengagement opponents taking refuge in the settlement of Gadid yesterday, as the army overcame residual resistance to its eviction of 8,500 Jewish residents from Gaza.

The barricades were erected at the gate to the settlement neighbouring Neve Dekalim, where police removed 800 protesters on Thursday - many of them struggling - from the two main synagogues.

Thousands of evacuated settlers are beginning new lives in a wide range of temporary accommodation in Israel. They range from hotels in Ashkelon, Beersheeva and Jerusalem to "caravilla" parks in places such as Nitzan, close to the southern Israel beauty spot of Nitzanim, and moshavs and kibbutzes scattered mainly through southern Israel.

The settlers are receiving a compensation package worth an average of $450,000 (£251,000) to provide help if they build their own homes, and even more if they move to the development areas of the Negev desert and the Galilee.

The army and police operation managed to complete the task at Gadid without a repeat of the violence in Kfar Darom on Thursday in which 41 policemen were injured in scenes bitterly condemned by the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who warned the perpetrators would be brought to justice.

But soldiers had to chase extreme right-wing protesters, mainly outsiders, who had infiltrated illegally into Gaza in previous weeks, who escaped from a police bus taking them back to Israel. They ran off into the Mowasi area, a Palestinian enclave under Israeli control between the sea and the main concentration of the now rapidly emptying settlements.

After negotiations with police, most of the settlers agreed to be taken out without resistance although police had to round up others who climbed on the roofs of homes, shouted insults and threw tiles at the security forces.

A tour of the southern Gaza settlements showed that many were virtual ghost villages, with bulldozers beginning to crush empty caravan homes in the first demolitions since the evacuation began. Under agreements with the Palestinians, all 1,500 Jewish homes and synagogues in Gaza, but not other public buildings, will be destroyed by the army.

Neve Dekalim itself was mostly deserted, with only a few families still awaiting evacuation, and the main vehicles on the roads were police and military. All but four of Gaza's 21 settlements have been evacuated and Major-General Dan Harel, the army's southern commander, said the remainder, which include Netzarim and Atzmona, will be evacuated by Tuesday.

There were also indications that next week the army will begin evacuation of the northern West Bank settlements included in the programme.

People at two secular settlements, Ganim and Kadim, have left, but a third, Sa Nur, is expected to be a centre of strong resistance, possibly reinforced by an influx of extreme-right protesters from other West Bank settlements.

In the southern town of Rafah, hundreds of Palestinians wearing T-shirts with the Palestinian flag bearing the slogan "Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem", joined a demonstration organised by the dominant Fatah organisation which is seeking to wrest credit for Israel's withdrawal from Hamas, which claims it has "driven" Israel out.

Abdel Raouf Barbar, a Fatah official, said: "We won, so we came to thank God for our victory."