AS next month’s deadline for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza draws near, hardcore Israelis and Americans who have poured into the Jewish settlements to oppose the pull-out are making their final preparations for battle. On the front line will be a new, all-female Jewish resistance wing dubbed the “Commando Girls”.

These are not Charlie’s Angels. They wear the figure-concealing garb of religious Jews — full skirts and loose, flowing tops.

A Sunday Times informant who infiltrated their so-called “resistance headquarters” for eight days found that the members of this new group were preparing to use violence to stop the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) uprooting the Jewish settlers in Gaza.

One spoke of killing or terrorising soldiers; another of fighting to the death.

The informant also found that these radicals, mostly settlers from the West Bank and New York Jews from a wealthy Messianic sect, had inside information from government security forces.

Rachel Orbach, a 22-year-old woman who was born in Gaza’s Gush Katif settlement bloc, agreed to infiltrate the group because she believed it contradicted everything the long-term residents cared about.

Few in the settlement bloc want to leave the houses and drip-irrigation farms they have built over the decades since Israel captured Gaza from Egypt in 1967. But they vehemently reject the use of violence against the IDF. Many have sons serving in elite IDF units. The “incomers”, as Gush Katif settlers call them, have another agenda.

Orbach — whose identity has been disguised to protect her — discovered that the 40-strong Commando Girls have organised around Nadia Matar, a flamboyant settler leader who moved from her comfortable house in the West Bank to a caravan among the Gush Katif invaders.

Orbach struggled to contain her emotions as the young women, aged between 18 and 24 and almost all from the West Bank, talked of their plans.

“If any soldiers come, we will attack them,” said one, sitting on the beach at a dusk campfire. “There is no choice. We will kill them or use other terror tactics.” The speaker did not elaborate.

“I love the IDF soldiers like brothers,” said Orbach. “I won’t let any of those Commando Girls or any other gangs hurt them.”

The Commando Girls, none of whom was from Gaza, could not have been more different. Orbach said they would taunt the young Israeli soldiers guarding them, yelling: “How can you call yourself a Jew? You are not Jewish if you remove Jews from their land.”

Some say the incomers have doubled the local population of 8,000 Jewish settlers who have lived in Gush Katif for decades, amid more than 1m Palestinians. They are ferocious about what they consider a betrayal by Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister. Sharon was once the man Jewish settlers called “godfather”. He has now promised to evacuate Gaza of all Jews when Israel withdraws on August 15.

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