Families have begun leaving settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that are due to be emptied next month under Israel's pullout plan.

Voting 18-3 on Sunday, the Israeli cabinet turned down a proposal to postpone the pullout for six months, thus clearing the way for the evacuation of all 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank to begin in mid-August.

While many of the 9000 settlers vow to resist evacuation, at least eight settler families have packed up in recent days.

Signs of recent departures are evident in Ganim, an isolated enclave next to the West Bank Palestinian town of Jenin.

Cardboard boxes and garbage bags filled with old magazines, books, towels and children's toys sit on a porch. Old garden furniture lie discarded in a large green garbage can.

Unlike the many settlers who claim an ideological attachment to the biblical land of Israel, many of the residents who are now leaving came to these settlements for the opportunity to get away from the city and live in a small pastoral community.

But not all the residents of Ganim plan to leave voluntarily. Mansour, the settlement secretary, estimated that seven families would remain until the end.

More than 400,000 Israelis live on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

The land was captured by the Israelis in the 1967 Middle East war and has been illegally occupied since.

PHOTO CAPTION

Police detains an opponent of Israel’s planned pullout from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank during an anti-disengagement protest in Jerusalem Wednesday June 29, 2005. (AP)