Thousands of Israeli rightists suspended a bid to march on Gaza settlements today after security forces blocked them from disrupting a planned pullout from the occupied strip.
Demonstrators - who had been halted by police and soldiers as they marched out of Ofakim in southern Israel - turned back toward the town just after dawn to rest and decide what to do next, a settler leader said.
Small bands of protesters had managed to slip past the massive cordon of security forces overnight, and police said they had arrested more than 200 people near roadblocks at Israel's border with the fenced-in Gaza Strip.
It was the latest attempt by settlers and their supporters to thwart Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip starting on August 17th in what he has called "disengagement" from conflict with Palestinians.
A rally in Ofakim last night was followed by a march by an estimated 10,000 protesters who were stopped by thousands of police and soldiers on a road just outside the town, which lies 20 kilometres from Gaza.
Many of the marchers, bearing the orange standard of the main Gaza settlement bloc of Gush Katif, sat on the road and chanted religious anthems as security forces looked on.
After hours of negotiations, an agreement was reached to end the standoff.
Polls show most Israelis support the planned withdrawal from Gaza and a small pocket of the occupied West Bank, but opponents say it would betray Jewish Biblical claims to the land and reward a nearly five-year-old Palestinian uprising.