NETZARIM remained an isolated bubble of unreality yesterday as Jewish settlers continued to build while the eviction squads arrived.

Its 500 inhabitants were defiant to the last, intent on expanding Israel’s 38-year Zionist building programme in the Gaza Strip at the very moment that a fleet of bulldozers was bringing it to an end. “We are building a home and we will continue until someone comes to stop us,” Sinai Inon, a labourer, said as his colleagues poured cement into a mixer on the roof of the Meshulami family’s new house.

They were hoping for a last-minute miracle. One said: “We are doing it because we have faith both in God Almighty and because it is a mitzvah [blessing] to settle and build up the Land of Israel. Every minute counts.”

The miracle never came. By last night the extremist outpost of Netzarim, detested by Palestinians and resented by many Israelis, had passed into history along with every other Jewish settlement in Gaza.

“It’s basically finished,” Major-General Dan Harel, the commander of the week-long operation to remove more than 8,000 settlers from the 21 settlements, said. It was completed two weeks ahead of schedule.

On the West Bank two remote settlements, Sanur and Homesh, have yet to be evacuated. Hundreds of hardliners are preparing to resist an eviction operation to begin today.

Yesterday the settlers of Netzarim went without a struggle. Soldiers and police joined them as they prayed in the synagogue one last time. The settlers then filed quietly behind a menorah (seven-branched candlestick) on to armoured buses and cars for the five-mile drive out of Gaza.

That drive made Netzarim the most reviled of all Gaza’s settlements among Palestinians. The fortified cluster of houses and palm trees lies in the middle of the Gaza Strip at the end of the east-to-west, settler-only road which is closed to Palestinians.

That road cut the Strip in two, making north-south travel impossible for Palestinians except on a coastal road that can be sealed off in seconds.

The settlers claim the right to live anywhere in the biblical Land of Israel, even though it required a battalion to protect Gaza’s 600 settlers, and 17 Israeli soldiers have died.

Among the settlement’s Palestinian neighbours, there was joy at the settlement’s evacuation. From early yesterday Salem al-Wahedi, 37, stood on his roof filming the historic occasion for his five children.

“I took out my video camera so that I can preserve this moment,” Mr al-Wahedi, who was born just one year after the Israeli occupation of Gaza in 1968, said. “This is a great day. It makes me so happy that they’re finally leaving.”

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