Israel launched its Gaza pullout yesterday, sending police and soldiers to deliver 48-hour eviction notices in Jewish settlements where hundreds of hardliners blocked gates and vowed resistance. The army sealed off the occupied territory overnight and began deploying after daybreak to tell Gaza settlers they must leave by tomorrow or be forcibly removed under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon?s ?disengagement plan.? But troops mostly held back as defiant settlers, some swaying in prayer, used makeshift barricades and their bodies in a bid to prevent an operation paving the way for Israel?s first uprooting of settlements on land Palestinians want for a state.

?A lot of blood was spilled on this holy land,? said settler Chaim Gross in the Morag enclave. ?It was presented to Abraham for the Jews and we are not going to leave it.? Eviction warnings to 9,000 settlers in all 21 settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank went into effect at midnight on Sunday, setting the stage for one of the most divisive chapters in the Jewish state?s history.

The pullout to end Israel?s 38-year occupation of Gaza, claimed by Palestinian militants as a victory and decried by Israeli opponents as a surrender to violence, is seen by Washington as a possible catalyst for renewed peacemaking. Under floodlights after midnight at the Kissufim Crossing on the Gaza border leading to the Gush Katif settlement bloc, the army lowered a gate with a red sign that declared: ?Stop. Entry into the Gaza Strip and presence there is forbidden by law!? 


<b>Settlers stream out</b>

Hundreds of Gaza settlers have signed state compensation deals to leave, but the army said 5,000 pullout opponents had slipped into the enclaves, raising fears of violence. Under the slogan ?Jews don?t expel Jews,? settler leaders have been waging an emotional campaign against Sharon?s plan to uproot settlements he said had little security value for Israel. 

Jonathan SAUL