RAFAH, Aug 19: Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Friday hailed Israel’s historic Gaza pullout as the result of Palestinian sacrifice. With most of the 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza evacuated or empty, Mr Abbas told a crowd of jubilant supporters that the ending of 38 years of occupation in the impoverished territory was ‘the fruit of Palestinian sacrifice’.

“We want on this occasion to pay homage to our martyrs, to our prisoners, to our wounded and all those among our people who have made sacrifices,” he said.

The Palestinian leader reiterated calls for his people to bolster the case for independence by refraining from violence, reiterating his refrain that Israel must make further pullbacks around Jerusalem and the far larger West Bank.

“The most important thing is how to build our country so that it will become a model of civilisation for the rest of the world,” he said.

“This step is only the first step that will be completed in Jenin and in the West Bank and in Jerusalem, God willing.”

Palestinians have welcomed the pullout as a victory for the resistance to four decades of occupation and the international community hopes it will mark a new page in efforts to bring peace to the turbulent Middle East.

“My heart danced for joy when I saw the smoke rise from Neve Dekalim and the settlers being chased out,” said 38-year-old Rasmi Sahlul, who used to earn 65 dollars a day as a farm labourer on the settlement.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said the pullout illustrated that ‘(Israeli premier) Sharon is capable of making peace’.

In an interview with the New York Times, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stressed that Israel’s obligations for peace with the Palestinians extended beyond the current pullout. “It cannot be Gaza only,” she said.

But Mr Sharon has pledged to pursue settlement activity in the West Bank — action that defies an internationally drafted peace plan for the Middle East.

Heavy silence: “This place will soon be a weapons factory”, warns a sign on the front door of one of hundreds of abandoned homes in the largest of the Gaza Strip settlements.

A heavy silence hangs over Neve Dekalim. Nothing stirs except a handful of orange ribbons, the symbol of settler resistance, fluttering in the breeze.

“Die, Arab!” reads the graffiti scrawled across one front door. “Arabs are completely forbidden to enter.”

Until Wednesday, when troops began forcibly taking people out of their homes, no-one believed that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would push ahead with his vow to remove every last Jew from the Gaza Strip and return this land to its Palestinian owners.

A neatly-folded army uniform and two metal identity tags sits on a chair outside one front door. Next to it, a medal for outstanding service. There is no note, for none is needed,

Next door, a child’s swimming costume hangs on a washing line, its young owner now miles from his former beach-front home.

A baby’s pram, a tiny bicycle, a pair of roller-skates lie abandoned in the sand. These are the last traces of a family life here in Neve Dekalim, Gaza’s largest settlement.

After weeks and months of fighting talk and protest, this whitewashed settlement town has finally been silenced, its houses emptied, its people removed.

Many of the sun-bleached bungalows are locked, a rarity in a town where few claimed to ever bolt their doors and where crime was something which happened elsewhere.

Ants swarm over a half-eaten bread roll inside one home, the black hat of an Orthodox Jew lying discarded on the floor. In the bathroom, a half-read novel lies next to the toilet, its title: “The German Dictator”.

“Nebuchadnezzar, Titus, Sharon — do you want to be like them?” reads another sign, listing the ancient kings and emperors who were responsible for destroying the first and second Jewish temples and dispersing the people of Israel.

Down a deserted cul-de-sac, the chirpy banter of a radio DJ cuts through the oppressive silence as soldiers help one of the last remaining families pile their belongings into lorry.

Filthy black water covers the ground floor of one two-storey home which was torched shortly after the evacuation began on Wednesday.

Inside, a blonde teenage squatter rubs sleep out of her eyes as the sun pours through the burnt-out roof. Alone, she is determined to stay for just one more sabbath in this former bastion of opposition to the Gaza withdrawal.

“I am staying here till the end of Shabbat,” she whispers. “I’m not going until then.” —AFP