Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Israeli troops linked arms around two synagogues in the Gaza Strip before the evacuation of hundreds of youths gathered there, setting the stage for the biggest confrontation since Israel's pullout began yesterday.

Troops were set to empty five settlements, including Neve Dekelim, Gaza's biggest, where they began bussing out settlers yesterday. In Netzer Hazani, Anita Tucker, a 59-year-old from Brooklyn, New York who moved to Gaza 29 years ago, said she was leaving the water running in her celery greenhouses. ``My celery is still growing now,'' she said, as settlers braced for the army's arrival. ``Whoever harvests it will have good celery.''

The evacuations from land captured by Israel almost four decades ago mark a pivotal political moment in the country's history. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, long a proponent of the settler movement, undertook the withdrawal after deciding the costs of retaining Gaza outweighed the advantages of giving it up. Four Jewish settlements in the West Bank will also be dismantled under the plan.

About 15,000 security personnel yesterday forcibly evacuated five settlements in Gaza. As many as 600 families remained in the strip, together with about 2,000 supporters, mostly teenagers who came from outside to thwart the pullout, Major General Uri Bar Lev said.

Today, security forces were concentrated around two synagogues housed in one building in Neve Dekelim, where teenagers gathered yesterday to resist the evacuation. Troops also entered Netzer Hazani, Gan Or, Shirat Hayam, Kfar Yam and Kfar Darom.

`Not My Country'

In Neve Dekelim, Moshe Weiss, 69, told police to take down the three Israeli flags hung over the door of his home. ``This isn't my country anymore,'' he said as his wife wept, a ``fragile'' sticker from the moving company on her chest.

In Kfar Darom, soldiers carried a man in phylacteries and a prayer shawl out of a religious school where many settlers were assembled. ``Ariel Sharon, you are a liar!'' he yelled, as they dragged him out to a bus. Then, from the window, he shouted at a soldier, ``Cry, yes cry! You should have refused to obey the order!''

There was little of the violent confrontation that the Israeli government had feared between troops and settlers on the first day of the pullout. Troops spent many hours negotiating peaceful evictions with settlers and their religious leaders.

One soldier in Kfar Darom did refuse orders to evacuate the school at the urging of one of the settlers praying there and was thanked with calls of ``Good for you!'' ``I told him to hand in his weapon,'' the settler said on Channel Two.

Mortars Fired

Overnight, Palestinians fired two mortar shells at the Gaza settlement of Gadid and a rocket at an Israel Defense Forces base, causing no damage or injuries, the army said.

At a West Bank settlement yesterday, an Israeli man shot and killed four Palestinians and wounded two others. Police spokesman Shlomi Saguy said the 40-year-old West Bank settler told investigators he was trying to stop the evacuation of Gaza. It was the second attack by a Jew on Arabs within a month.

Sharon said in a statement that he ``viewed with gravity the act of Jewish terror directed against innocent Palestinians that stemmed from the twisted logic that this would stop the pullout.''

The shooting prompted the Islamic Hamas movement to warn of further bloodshed. ``This won't pass without punishment,'' Musheer al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman, said in a phone interview.

One Week

Major General Dan Harel, head of the Israeli army's southern command, told reporters yesterday that the evacuations would be completed within a week. The army is then slated to pack the remaining belongings of residents and demolish the homes before the territory is handed over to Palestinian control.

The settlers are being bussed to 15 hotels throughout Israel. Tucker, of Netzer Hazani, said that her community planned to camp out in tents at Jerusalem's Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, after the government failed to find them all accommodations in the same city.

The 21 Gaza settlements in the 360-square-kilometer (140- square-mile) strip that Israel captured from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East war, were home to about 8,500 settlers who had been living among 1.4 million Palestinians before the withdrawal began.

Israel is evacuating the settlements under a plan it hopes will boost Israeli security and advance a strategy to create a peaceful Palestinian state backed by the Middle East ``quartet'' -- the U.S., the United Nations, European Union and Russia.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jonathan Ferziger in Neve Dekelim at jferziger@bloomberg.net; Janine Zacharia in Netzer Hazani, Gaza jzacharia@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 18, 2005 04:57 EDT