Anti-Gaza protest fizzles out

Under massive security, all access to the small town of Kfar Maimon has been sealed off to prevent new demonstrators from arriving, albeit allowing tired protestors to return home.

The main settlers' lobby that organised the demonstration said the bulk of the rally would break up later in the day, leaving a kernel of "several thousand" hardcore protestors determined to reach the Gaza settlements.

"We never intended to stay longer than Wednesday, because most of the demonstrators came with their families and need to get back to their jobs and homes," Yesha spokeswoman Emilie Amaroussi told AFP.

A Yesha leader said demonstrators were still determined to reach doomed Jewish settlements in the occupied Gaza Strip that were last week declared a military zone closed to public access.

The Israeli parliament overwhelmingly rejected a last-ditch move by right-wingers Wednesday to delay the Gaza Strip pullout for up to a year.

A series of bills put forward by a number of MPs, including two former cabinet ministers, were rejected after a stormy debate by a vote of 69-41, with two abstentions.

A sponsor of one of the bills, former welfare minister Zevulun Orlev, had proposed that the pullout not begin before July 2006, arguing that the government had made insufficient preparations to look after the 8,000 Gaza settlers.

"The government is trying to fool us when it says that everything is ready to rehouse the settlers," he said at the start of the debate.