THE commandos are ready. Alongside them are the psychologists and next to them the religious officers. Their aim is to prevent the unimaginable: Israeli soldiers opening fire on their own people.

Tomorrow, in one of biggest gambles of Ariel Sharon’s career as prime minister, the army begins the nightmarish task of ejecting settlers from their 21 isolated and expensive outposts in the Gaza Strip and a further four in the West Bank.

Most of the 9,000 or so settlers are expected to go quietly, but special forces have been called in to deal with an unpredictable number of zealots who may resist. At the least they are expected to play cat-and-mouse with the security forces. At worst they could take soldiers hostage, commit suicide or open fire on the troops.

Among the 60,000 Israeli soldiers and police being deployed this weekend are special “negotiating teams” that have been training for weeks to deal with maverick extremists.

Commanders will first approach their houses, hoping to persuade them to drop their weapons while gaining time for their commandos to prepare for any assault. The psychologists and religious officials will follow in a back-up team. With 17 soldiers to each house, the army is confident that no detail has been overlooked.

“I hope the operation will end by September 4,” Shaul Mofaz, the defence minister, said optimistically last week. Brigadier General Amos Ben-Avraham, commander of the withdrawal operation, is taking few chances. He has recalled three of Israel’s top commando brigades from guarding against attacks from Syria and Iran and moved them south to Gaza.

Among the special forces are navy divers from Flotilla 13, soldiers from Unit 262 — Israel’s equivalent of the SAS — and troops from the Shaldag (Kingfisher) special air force operation.

Planning has been painstaking, with commanders even studying the floor plans of the 2,526 houses in the settlements dotted across Gaza. They have also looked at precedents, such as the 51-day siege of Waco, Texas, in 1993, when US federal forces broke in, killing 80 cult members. For Sharon, even a few deaths in Gaza would be a political catastrophe.

“Normally we would storm a house killing everyone inside, whereas here we have to storm the house and keep everyone alive,” said one commander. “It’s not an easy job.”

He and his colleagues are quietly confident that they can avoid serious confrontation — and bloodshed. But an attack last week on Israeli Arab civilians by a messianic Israeli soldier provided ample warning of the tensions raised by the Gaza pullout. The soldier, from a West Bank settlement, murdered four Arab passengers on a bus, believing that he could change Sharon’s policy.

The shadowy resistance movement among the settlers claims that it is as well prepared as the army. “We also have ex-special forces officers,” said Arik Yitzhaki, from the Shirat Hayam settlement. “We’ve got loudspeakers, motorcycles to move fast from place to place, food, an alternative communication system. We’re ready.”

One tactic the army fears is the use of fake military uniforms to cause confusion. Over the past few days the army has issued all troops with identifying caps and other special clothing that settlers cannot copy.

Adding to today’s chaos in Gaza are 3,000 “infiltrators” who have slipped into the settlements, hoping to cause trouble and delay the withdrawal. Thousands more are expected to try to converge on the strip today.

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