Thousands of Israeli ultranationalists demonstrating against a Gaza pullout planned to march from Israel into Jewish settlements in the occupied territory on Wednesday, a procession police pledged to block.
Ahead of a possible confrontation with 15,000 police and soldiers deployed along the Gaza border, opponents of the withdrawal slated to begin on August 17th held a peaceful rally yesterday in the Israeli town of Sderot near the frontier.
"All of the land is ours," read one banner amid a crowd comprised almost entirely of religious Jews dressed in orange, the colour adopted by opponents of the first removal of Israeli settlements from occupied land Palestinians want for a state.
Just across the border, a rocket fired by Palestinian militants towards Sderot fell short and hit a house in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, killing a six-year-old Palestinian boy and wounding seven other people, local residents said.
The casualties included the wife and children of Hisham Abdel-Razeq, a former Palestinian cabinet minister, townspeople said. He was visiting his brother elsewhere in Beit Hanoun at the time.
Ending the Sderot rally by singing the Israeli national anthem, protesters boarded buses for Ofakim, an Israeli town, 20 km (12 miles) from the border and out of Palestinian rocket range, to spend the night in a tent encampment.
The string of protests, scheduled to end on Friday, could be a final show of resolve before the evacuation of all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank gets under way.
Many pullout opponents see Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to "disengage" from Gaza, which he says Israel has no chance of keeping in a future peace deal, as betrayal of Jewish claims on biblical land and a reward for Palestinian violence.
Polls show that a narrow majority of Israelis support the Gaza pullout. Palestinians welcome any withdrawal from land captured in the 1967 Middle East war, but fear the Gaza plan is a ruse to strengthen Israel's hold on the West Bank.
The pullout affects 9,000 settlers, fewer than 4 per cent of the 240,000 who live alongside 3.8 million Palestinians.
The World Court has branded all settlements illegal. Israel disputes this. The United States has said Israel could expect to keep some settlements under any eventual peace deal.