Nitzan, Israel — Israel's contentious pullout from the occupied Gaza Strip isn't slated to officially begin for another two weeks, but a quiet exodus of settlers has already begun.
While hundreds of families vow to fight for their homes, others are loading moving trucks, wiping away tears and waving farewell to neighbors before taking one last look at houses that will be reduced to rubble within weeks.
On Sunday, Israeli officials handed over keys to the first families moving into the largest temporary neighborhood hastily erected for the settlers.
So far, about half of 1,700 families living in the Gaza Strip and four northern West Bank settlements scheduled for demolition have told the government that they plan to leave peacefully.
"Now we begin a new life," said Ety Ben Dahan, a 39-year-old Gaza Strip settler who became the first to get keys to a new house in this community about 15 miles north of the Gaza Strip.
For 10 years, Ben Dahan and her family lived in Nissanit, a settlement just inside the Gaza Strip, a coastal region packed with 1.3 million Palestinians who live under Israeli occupation.
Of the 25 settlements slated for closure as part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's strategic plan to increase his nation's security, Nissanit has proved to be one of the most cooperative. Almost all of the 250 families have opted to accept government compensation and find new places to live without putting up a fight.
Yossi Ben-David, the son of a family of Jewish settlers, looks out through the window of his family's new house in a newly built community of mobile homes in Nitzan, southern Israel. In a sign of the approaching withdrawal, several families from the northern Gaza settlement of Nissanit received keys Sunday for temporary housing they will be assigned to during Israel's evacuation of the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip this month.
On Sunday, Ben Dahan and her husband set out on a house-hunting trip to Nitzan, a neighborhood of 350 pre-fabricated homes meant to serve as temporary housing for displaced settlers. After a quick tour, the couple picked a four-bedroom, two-bath house with a small strip of grass set on a rise overlooking a nearby highway. It's about half the size of their old home, but it's the biggest her family can get in Nitzan under the government plan.
Ben Dahan said she loved the small town feel of Nissanit. But all that changed last October when a homemade Palestinian rocket sailed into their community and knocked two of her six children off their feet as they walked to synagogue.
"The children are afraid," said Ben Dahan's husband, Yosef. "They can't live there any more."
While Ety Ben Dahan isn't sure she can keep her old job and the children will have to travel an hour to school, she said she is willing to give up her old life if it will help bring an end to decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"I hope there will be peace," she said.
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