NISSANIT, Gaza Strip (AP) – Israeli bulldozers tore down red-roofed villas and scattered debris across green lawns yesterday, virtually erasing Jewish settlements from the map within a few hours and delivering a graphic message that Israelis will no longer live in the Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank, security forces skirmished with some of the thousands of ultra-nationalists defending two northern settlements, who the army fears may use weapons when troops begin evicting their residents, most likely tomorrow.

Dozens of settlers raced towards troops setting up a staging area near the settlement of Sanur, slashed tyres of military vehicles and exchanged blows with the soldiers, in a prelude to what could be the most difficult mission of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement” plan.

Moving more swiftly than planned, the military moved to empty four Gaza settlements yesterday, hoping to complete the removal of settlers from Gaza and the northern corner of the West Bank by the end of the week, a move that a US envoy predicted would reinvigorate Mideast peace efforts.

“The United States views the Israeli disengagement from Gaza as an important opportunity… to take further steps forward towards a better future for Israelis and Palestinians,” said Assistant Secretary of State David Welch, the first senior US official to visit Gaza since Palestinians killed three Americans in a diplomatic convoy two years ago.

Troops in overwhelming numbers yesterday brushed past barricades and steel gates to enter four Gaza settlements and escorted teary residents to evacuation buses. Settlers bid farewell to communities they built over decades, repeating anguishing scenes that have gripped Israelis almost daily over the past week.

Yossi Harush, a career army officer, and his family built a mock cemetery in the Atzmona settlement with cardboard tombstones of the Jewish people’s enemies across the ages: Pharaoh, Titus, Haman, Hitler and Yasser Arafat.

“Our feeling is like this is the start of a holocaust,” said Ruthie Harush, a mother of seven. “Didn’t the Holocaust begin with Hitler saying he was a democratic leader and soldiers saying they only carried out orders?”

The last of the 21 Gaza settlements, to be evacuated today, is Netzarim just south of Gaza City, which has 400 residents and was one of the earliest outposts built in the coastal strip.a

Massive D9 bulldozers, many driven by Israeli Arabs, tore down homes in Nissanit, Dugit, Peat Sadeh and Ganei Tal. They needed just five minutes to plow through the whitewashed walls of a home, and reduced entire villages to refuse dumps in less than a day. In Ganei Tal, some 40 houses came down in an hour.

The claws of excavators ripped apart red tiles and wooden beams like matchstick structures. Broken tables, smashed pipes, toy trucks and children’s clothes littered the streets.

An Israeli Arab tractor driver, Abu Rashed Ali, 42, said the settlers shouldn’t have moved to Gaza in the first place. “The mistake was on the part of the state” for sending the settlers to Gaza, he said, and “now it is paying with land and people”.

Cranes lifted prefabricated houses onto flatbed trucks to be taken away to Israel, possibly for temporary housing for displaced settlers.

The mounds of rubble and abandoned belongings flanking the paved streets were reminiscent of Israel’s large-scale house demolitions in Palestinian communities during the recent years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

“They are using the same bulldozers they used in (the Palestinian towns of) Rafah and Khan Younis, but I feel nothing like what we felt in the past” when Palestinian homes were destroyed, said university student Sufian Jarada, 23.

“They should have left a long time ago. But I still fear for the future because Israel is still everywhere around Gaza, and in the West Bank too.”

Security officials said 50 bulldozers and several cranes were operating in Gaza yesterday, and another 100 were mobilised and waiting to start work. By dusk, some houses were still left standing in the four settlements. Israeli soldiers will camp in them to guard the settlements until the territory is handed to the Palestinians.