NEVE DEKALIM, Aug 17: Israeli troops dragged settlers screaming and sobbing from homes and synagogues on Wednesday, beginning a forced evacuation of Gaza settlements after nearly four decades of occupation.

Thousands of unarmed soldiers marched house to house in Gaza’s Jewish enclaves, ordering people out and in some cases breaking down doors when they refused. Police grabbed protesters off the streets and pushed them into waiting buses.

A West Bank settler woman opposed to the pullout set herself on fire at a checkpoint outside the Gaza Strip, suffering burns over 60 per cent of her body. Ultranationalist Israelis see the West Bank and Gaza Strip as land bequeathed to the Jews by God.

One woman wept and shouted: “I don’t want to! I don’t want to!” as four female soldiers, each grabbing a limb, carried her out of her home in Neve Dekalim, the largest Gaza settlement.

In one synagogue, radical youths who had slipped into the main settlement bloc sang the haunting melody some Jews sang on their way to Nazi gas chambers.

But elsewhere there were signs of settlers resigning themselves to evacuation as they hugged soldiers before filing quietly onto buses taking them to Israel. Some troops and police broke into tears as they pulled families from their homes.

The operation, the culmination of Mr Sharon’s plan for the first removal of settlements from land Palestinians want for a state, began after a midnight deadline for the remaining Gaza settlers to leave or face eviction.

Officials said by late afternoon more than 60 per cent of Gaza’s 8,500 residents had left or been evicted and evacuation was going faster than expected and could be over in two days.

Palestinians, who see settlements as the most hated symbol of occupation, watched and cheered from nearby rooftops.

“We should let them get out,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted as telling the official WAFA news agency.

Confrontation loomed as forces fanning out among the red-roofed villas of Neve Dekalim became locked in a standoff with hundreds of radical youths holed up in the synagogue.

“Guys, why are you doing this?” cried a man named Yehuda, who stood on his rooftop in his old military uniform in the Morag settlement after troops, accompanied by bulldozers, marched in.

Smoke from tyre and rubbish fires billowed over the area.

SHARON’S GAMBLE: Mr Sharon appears willing to gamble on a historic precedent of uprooting Gaza settlements for what he says is a move vital to Israel’s demographic survival as a Jewish and democratic state.