Hundreds of young protesters flooded Israeli courtrooms yesterday after blocking dozens of highways a day before, the most disruptive demonstration yet against the planned summer pullout from Gaza and part of the West Bank - just as settlers themselves were signing up to move back to Israel. Extra judges were brought into courtrooms to handle hearings for more than 300 protesters, most of them in their teens and early 20s, detained while blocking highways with burning tyres and their own bodies. Police agreed to release about 130 with a ban on similar protests for 60 days.

Young supporters sang and danced outside the courtrooms, encouraging their friends, as they were taken inside, many in handcuffs.

Organisers called the road blocking exercise a success, noting that they tied up thousands of police.

Israel's new Shin Bet security chief, Yuval Diskin, warned that the pullout could lead to Jewish terrorism.

In the southern West Bank yesterday, about 50 Palestinian youths threw rocks at Israeli troops searching for Palestinian activists, witnesses said.

They said soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets, slightly wounding two of the youths, and arrested one.

The US yesterday confirmed that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will meet President George W Bush at the White House on May 26.

PHOTO CAPTION

Ultra-orthodox Jewish protesters run away from Israeli motorcyclist policemen during a demonstration against the desecration of graves for a new Israeli highway next to the northern Israeli Kibbutz of Regavim, in Jerusalem April 26, 2005. (REUTERS)