Israeli forces rolled in at first light to expel settlers from the Gaza Strip, bracing for a showdown with diehard radicals vowing to fight eviction to the bitter end.
Several hundred Jewish settler families defied a midnight (2100 GMT Tuesday) deadline to leave of their own accord as Israel embarked on its historic pullout from the Palestinian territory after 38 years of occupation.
Busloads of troops streamed into the largest settlement of Neve Dekalim -- scene of violent clashes on Tuesday -- and three other communities where soldiers and police will go door-to-door to remove settlers from their homes.
Security officials said they expected some 10,000 soldiers and police to take part in the pullout in Neve Dekalim, the main focus of the largest ever peacetime operation in the history of the Jewish state.
Settlers had screamed abuse and fought with police and soldiers on Tuesday as they poured in to clear the Mediterranean coastal strip of its Jewish residents in an operation that has bitterly divided Israel.
As many as 5,000 right-wing protestors succeeded in infiltrating the settlements over the past few weeks to join efforts to block the eviction but Israeli police arrested 400 overnight trying to move into Gaza.
While the diehards prepared for a final showdown, digging trenches and erecting barbed-wire barricades, a steady flow of sobbing Israelis, children in tow, had streamed out of the Gaza Strip Tuesday in buses and cars laden with possessions.
Hundreds of radical youths have also taken refuge inside synagogues in Neve Dekalim while others kept watch for the arrival of soldiers, praying for divine intervention to thwart what appeared to be their inevitable eviction.
Israeli officials vowed they would succeed in ending their 38-year occupation of the one of the most densely populated places on earth, where 1.3 million mainly impoverished Palestinians lived along with the 8,000 settlers.
Israel has mounted a force of 40,000 mostly unarmed troops and police for the pullout which the international community hopes could mark a breakthrough in the troubled Middle East peace process.
Thousands of Palestinian security forces have also been deployed around the Gaza Strip, stronghold of the Hamas movement and scene of some of the fiercest fighting in five years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
PHOTO CAPTION
Settlers and their supporters set fire to rubbish in an attempt to block a road at the Gaza Strip settlement of Morag. (AFP)