IN 1972, when they were both in their early twenties and she was newly pregnant, Sam and Bryna Hilburg left New York for Israel intent on living the Zionist dream and settling the Land of Israel.

At first they lived on a kibbutz in southern Israel. He then joined the border police and they moved to a West Bank settlement. Finally, driven by an urge to create something of lasting value, he applied to the Government and was allocated a few acres of sand dunes in a new Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.

That was 26 years ago. In the subsequent quarter century the Hilburgs and about 70 other Israeli families have transformed those sand dunes into the lush, green settlement of Netzer Hazani, with green lawns, palm trees and neat roads between the pleasant homes.

The Hilburgs built hothouses and grew organic cherry tomatoes that they sold to Marks & Spencer and other European outlets. They raised six children. They survived Palestinian attacks on their settlement and they experienced the tragedies as well as the joys that root people to their communities.

Eight years ago their soldier son, Yochanan, 22, was killed on an Israeli naval commando mission in Lebanon. He lies buried in Gush Katif’s cemetery among 47 other graves.

As the midnight deadline approached for the Hilburgs to quit Gaza, they, like most of their neighbours, were refusing to leave the place where they had spent the most productive years of their life.

Mr Hilburg’s hothouses have been closed. His ten Palestinian workers have been laid off. He stands to benefit from an £8.2 million deal to sell Israeli hothouses to Palestinian farmers and is eligible for generous compensation from the Israeli Government for his home, but he has applied for neither. Anticipating the imminent arrival of Israeli troops, he and his wife sent some of their most precious possessions out of Gaza, but that is all. “They’ll have to carry us out of here,” he said. “We won’t use violence. But we won’t make it easy, either.”

Hardest of all is leaving behind their son’s remains, although soldiers will remove all Israeli graves once Gaza’s 21 settlements have been evacuated, lest Palestinians desecrate them. “We know when we’re out of here they will take out the bodies,” Mrs Hilburg said. “That’s the most distressing thing in all of this. It’s like he’s being killed all over again.”

The Hilburgs, who are in their mid-fifties, feel bitterness, anger and a strong sense of having been betrayed by Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister who was once the settlers’ champion. “This is a mistake. We’re being made to give in to terrorism and it will only breed more terror,” Mrs Hilburg said.

Mr Sharon addressed the Israeli nation on Monday night, explaining that 8,000 settlers could not survive indefinitely in settlements surrounded by a million hostile Palestinians, but the Hilburgs were unpersuaded. “I listened to Ariel Sharon and he said nothing,” Mrs Hilburg said. “He said what a great idea it was to leave Gaza, but not why — why I have to give up my home, why I have to dig up my son’s grave .”

At the Kissufim crossing three miles to the east t another farmer, Avraham Ankri, and his family were among the last settlers to leave voluntarily before the midnight deadline.

After 15 years in the settlement of Neve Dekalim a young Israeli soldier beeped them and their silver Mazda out of Gaza on an electronic data collector, recording their names, ages, car registration and destination — a hotel in Ashkelon.

Unlike the Hilburgs, they had accepted the inevitable. “It is very painful day,” Mr Ankri, 48, said. “When you are a farmer it is so much more difficult. You are so much more attached to the land.”

Behind them they left the graves of two friends killed in the struggle by Gaza’s 1.4 million Palestinians to regain the land seized by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967 and held ever since. “This is the hardest thing, that your friends’ blood is spilt in this place and they are buried here,” their son, Motti, aged 21, said.

Then, their car piled with plastic chairs, an air-conditioner and a Torah balanced on a bucket of cleaning materials, they drove off for the last time.

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