THE Israeli Army intends to blow up more than thirty synagogues and six Jewish religious schools in Gaza after the withdrawal next month.

The Israeli authorities that are negotiating the handover with the Palestinians have already agreed that 1,600 houses are to be demolished, but the fate of the religious buildings is especially emotive for observant Jewish settlers.

Even as the army disclosed the plan, a senior figure in the Government suggested that the pullout might be brought forward from midAugust to prevent opponents disrupting it.

Yesterday the last of several thousand protesters who had tied up 20,000 security forces for three days drifted away from the farming community of Kfar Maimon.

Their demonstration fizzled out when they were barred from marching to the Gush Katif settlements in Gaza.

But in the early hours of yesterday up to 300 of the demonstrators left the main body and crossed fields to sneak into Gush Katif. They were eventually detained after trying to cut through fences. The arrests represented another victory for the security forces, who resolutely faced down more than 10,000 settlers who tried to march from Kfar Maimon with the aim of preventing the evacuation.

As buses arrived to ferry home the remaining protesters while others walked and hitch-hiked along roads leading from Kfar Maimon yesterday, there was an air of dejection.

Most of the police and troops had left the area and the majority of checkpoints guarding passage to the Kissufim Crossing into the Gaza settlements had been dismantled, an indicator that the security forces no longer regarded the settlers as a threat.The three-day operation to contain the settlers behind the barbed wire of Kfar Maimon raised government concerns that a month-long protest before the pullout could exact a high price, and led Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, to raise the prospect of bringing the start date forward. “This confrontation saps a great deal of energy, disrupts the lives of all of the country’s residents,” Mr Olmert told Israel Radio. “I definitely weigh positively the possibility of moving the date.”

But Silvan Shalom, the Foreign Minister, countered that it would be impractical to bring forward the disengagement plan. “We should stick to the timetable,” he said.

“The evacuation needs one more vote in the Cabinet and it will take time. Not all the preparations have been made yet, not for the evacuation and not for settling the settlers in other places.”

Another concern, highlighted by the arrival in Israel last night of Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, is the fear of increased Palestinian violence that could also derail the process.

Dr Rice began her visit by meeting Mr Shalom, her Israeli counterpart, who declared that the region was “on the verge of a most crucial and decisive moment” in implementing the pullout from Gaza.

During her three-day visit, Dr Rice will meet Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader. Last night she said that she would discuss “the need for tight co-ordination and for rapid resolution of a number of key issues” before the handover.

“This is a critical time in the history of this region because Prime Minister Sharon has taken an historic decision to disengage from the Gaza and four settlements in the West Bank,” she told reporters.

The planned date for the withdrawal from all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the West Bank was postponed from July 20, ostensibly out of consideration for the religious Jews observing a three-week mourning period, beginning on Sunday, for the destruction of the biblical Jewish temples.

A decision to demolish the synagogues and religious schools in the evacuated settlements is bound to antagonise further the 9,000 settlers who are due to leave Gaza, especially since Mr Sharon had originally ordered that the buildings be dismantled and brought to Israel.

Brigadier-General Uzi Moscovich, head of a division assigned to the Gaza pullout, said that it would be impractical as the larger religious structures would take up to five days to demolish with bulldozers, disrupting the pullout timetable.

Army rabbis have not objected to the use of explosives. “We will bring the . . . explosives and blow them up,” General Moscovich said during a briefing. “This is for practical and symbolic reasons.”

But Debbie Rosen, a spokeswoman for the Gush Katif settlers, said: “These structures are not just another apartment or office building. These are the centre of life of the whole community, where we have our ceremonies, our sad times and our happy times. They are very important to us.”

Times Recommends

• Would you live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall?
• Wish you were here, says Iraq tourist board
• Russian policeman’s corruption plea to Putin