12 historic hours in Gaza

It's close to 1 a.m. Wednesday and police chief Aharon Franko is leaning over the hood of a squad car.

Spread out across it is a satellite photograph of Neve Dekelim, with red lines mapping out every house in this Gaza community, which once numbered 500 families, and is now down to just over 300.

Other officers crowd around, preparing the paths along which they will send troops and police - working in concert with each other - when daylight breaks on the third day of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

A woman appears, clapping in their ears and shouting. The officers, as well as special forces implementing the pullout have been met with a barrage of verbal abuse. Screaming, obstructing their way, and calling them war criminals are all part of the widespread tactics of the opponents of disengagement.

"If someone would behave like this towards me on the streets of Haifa or Tel Aviv, I'd arrest them immediately," Mr. Franko says. "But given the circumstances, we have to show restraint."

The officers clench their jaws and look away. Franko, in charge of a national police division that will escort soldiers to settlers' houses in the morning, indicates that he can already tell, "without checking," that the woman is an outside infiltrator who has come into Gaza to oppose disengagement.

"Those who are from the outside have done a lot of damage to this beautiful community," he says, looking at a landscape now dotted with burning dumpsters and refuse.

The outsiders, Israeli army estimates, are shaping up as the more troublesome sector of the population. They will be charged and removed from Gaza in the days to come.

But instead of getting bogged down in nasty cat-and-mouse chase from the start, Israeli forces are instead focusing on first removing the residents who have more at stake.

It is 2:30 a.m. and Neve Dekelim is still restless. Young people march around singing songs and blocking army vehicles. A middle-aged couple blocks an army bus for more than an hour, screaming themselves hoarse as the soldiers, inches away, say nothing.

"Why? I want an answer!" says the woman standing in front of the the bus shouts. "That's your job? Not to say a thing?"

"I have no explanation," the soldier says.

Turning onto another street around 2:30 a.m. however, reveals the site of a platoon of soldiers trying to rest, a few of them sleeping in the grass at the curbside.

One of the residents, a gardener named Efraim Goldstein, is having a quieter conversation with an officer in charge.

"Yes, I'm talking now, but he'll throw me out tomorrow," says Mr. Goldstein when he walks away, his arm wrapped around his son. "What can I do, fight them?" he says, gesturing over to the line of half-slumbering soldiers. "Any of them could be my son."

Stress and sun makes sure everyone is up early. By 7 a.m., the synagogue complex here is filled with worshipers. Men and women are already teary, including one wearing a special vest that identifies her as a professional social worker, who came as a volunteer.

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