Gaza's new dawn brings joy and chaos

Columns of black smoke billowed into the sky, the former synagogue lay in ruins and Islamic Jihad gunmen wearing black masks raised Kalashnikov rifles up towards the sky, relishing their apparent victory.

After the youths finished setting fire to and smashing up the empty synagogue building, a bulldozer delivered the coup de grace. Behind the ruins, a youth stood on the rooftop of one of the few buildings left intact by the retreating Israelis, removing red tiles. A donkey cart took away scrap metal to be sold.

"This is from the Jewish dogs," said its driver. "This is from our land."

Yesterday, the end of 38 years of often harsh Israeli rule, was a day of joy for Palestinians. For some it was hard to grasp the erasure of occupation's foremost symbol, the illegal settlements.

"I want to dance - this is a step towards freedom," said Mohammed Farouh, 18, standing in farmland outside Netzarim that the army had bulldozed into a wasteland.

But it was also a sobering day for anyone who believed Israel's unilateral pull-out from the Strip would mean rapid-fire reconciliation and, in the words of a Palestinian Authority poster of a child holding a flag, a new dawn.

The Palestinian security forces, despite a huge deployment, again failed to assert control or keep order, reinforcing the increasing sense of lawlessness and chaos in the Strip and accentuating questions over Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's ability to govern.

In Netzarim, Palestinian police sergeant Izzedin Najat chased after a youth and stopped him from vandalising an electricity pole, but this was a rare exception. "We have to protect the electricity," he said. "There are people who want to destroy everything but we have to try to protect things because it's in our interest."

Not everyone at the former settlement was intent on vandalism. There were also the destitute, looking for anything they could sell, including scrap rubber from irrigation equipment. A woman dressed in black carried off a bag of mangoes she had picked from the settlement's fields.

With smoke swirling from burned trees near him, Sgt Najat added: "I am unhappy with what I see. I wanted everything to be done in a civilised way. What will the world say about us?"

Previously, the Palestinian Authority had said troops would prevent the public from entering the settlements until after they were searched for ordnance it said might be left behind in the surrounding areas.

The last Israeli tanks left the Strip before dawn yesterday and troops locked a metal gate and hoisted their flag on the Israeli side of the border. For now, at least, Israel retains control of all movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza.

In Jerusalem, Zeev Boim, the Israeli deputy defence minister, termed the destruction "barbaric vandalism that was predictable". On Sunday, the Israeli government had decided to leave behind the former synagogue buildings rather than demolish them as the Palestinian Authority had urged.

Mr Boim added that Arabs "have a long history of vandalism of the holy values of other religions". As a result of the destruction, Israel would "have to weigh if we can negotiate with them".

However, Mr Boim credited the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, with doing a good job in preventing the withdrawing Israelis from coming under gunfire. Israeli police, though, were concerned about revenge attacks by Israeli right-wing extremists in response to the destruction of the former synagogues.

Mr Abbas said: "Today is a day of joy and happiness that our people were deprived of in the last century," adding that the Palestinians still have a long path to statehood.

In an interview published in Italy's Corriere Della Sera newspaper yesterday, he said: "Give me until the end of the year and I will be able to control the chaos in Gaza.

"Now that the Israeli pull-out is completed, we will be better able to deal with the problem."

That prediction, and the idea that Mr Abbas can curb the rising power of Hamas, seemed optimistic yesterday. For one thing, many of the Palestinians who descended on the abandoned settlements were crediting the armed attacks of Hamas and not the Palestinian Authority or the ruling Fatah movement with expelling the Israeli army.

Mohammed Naji, a university student, said: "This is a victory for the country and for us that the land is liberated. And that victory comes from the resistance of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The authority has got nowhere with its negotiations."

Ismail Haniye, a Hamas leader, said yesterday: "We should protect the resistance option and the resistance weapons. These weapons liberated the land and by these weapons we will continue the liberation process."

Mr Abbas has outlined an ambitious plan to reconstruct Gaza's shattered economy, which he hopes will boost the forces of moderation.

Meanwhile, Mr Boim warned that Israel would respond to Kassam rocket barrages emanating from Gaza with artillery fire.

In Rafah, at Gaza's border with Egypt, Egyptian border guards shot and killed a Palestinian as hundreds of Palestinians stormed a buffer zone that had previously been policed by Israeli troops.

Elsewhere, doctors said three Palestinians drowned off the Gaza coast as hundreds rushed to a beach that had been off limits to Palestinians.