Settlers plan protests over Gaza pull-out

JEWISH settler leaders threatened to hold massive protests as the last parliamentary obstacle to Israel’s pull-out from the Gaza Strip was set to be removed yesterday.

Legislators were expected to give Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, a comfortable majority in passing the state budget late last night, to follow up his parliamentary victory in defeating a bill for a referendum on the Gaza withdrawal, due to begin on 20 July.

Opponents of the withdrawal had hoped to defeat the budget, which would have forced new elections, but Mr Sharon paved the way for its passage by striking a deal with the secularist Shinui party.

Settler leaders say they are now turning their energies to mobilising the public against the withdrawal.

Despite opinion polls to the contrary, they insist that most Israelis oppose the plan to remove about 8,000 settlers from Gaza and the northern West Bank.

"We are taking the struggle to the public domain and our goal is to bring hundreds of thousands of people to the Katif Bloc," said settler spokeswoman Emily Amrusy, referring to the Strip’s largest settlement grouping. "We will succeed in preventing the evacuation through sheer mass of people."

On Monday, the Israeli navy conducted an exercise testing the use of naval vessels to evacuate settlers. The withdrawal by sea is being readied in case land routes are blocked by protests, media reports said.

Gideon Ezra, the Israeli internal security minister, sparked a furore yesterday by raising the possibility that authorities would collect weapons from settlers before the withdrawal, arms that settlers say they need for self-defence.