Netivot, Israel ? Security forces blocked thousands of Jewish settlers and their supporters from marching Monday night in protest of Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip next month.

After a two-hour standoff, settlers said they reached an agreement with security forces to spend the night in Kfar Maimon, a village two miles from their starting point and 12 miles away from their goal – the main crossing point into the Gaza settlements.

Settlers pledged to push on toward Gaza this morning.

About 20,000 police and soldiers were deployed in southern Israel to block the marchers, who started out after a rally in the town of Netivot. A line of soldiers and police stopped the march shortly after it started.

Forming a sea of orange, their chosen protest color, the settlers shouted at the security forces to disobey their orders, while protest leaders tried to persuade military officers to let them through. No violence was reported.

In an unprecedented step, police fanned out across the country to prevent people from boarding buses headed for the demonstration.

In Jerusalem, about a dozen demonstrators started walking toward Gaza, more than 60 miles away.

The protesters’ main target was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, for decades the champion of settlement construction and expansion who changed course and proposed removing veteran settlements from the West Bank and Gaza for the first time.

Opponents of Israel's disengagement plan attend a rally in the southern Israeli town of Netivot. On Monday they began a three-day march to Gaza, 15 miles away. The protest was the largest yet against Israel's planned pullout from the Gaza Strip next month.

Demonstrators in Netivot warned that exiting Gaza would leave Hamas with a free hand and encourage attacks. Five young children sat in a circle with bumper stickers attached to their shirts reading, “Sharon is creating a terror state.”

Ori Ben-Naim, 15, from the West Bank settlement of Hashmonaim, was determined to march on Gaza. “They don’t have a way to stop us,” he said. “The march is going to show, especially to the government, that we are not going to give up Gush Katif.”

Almost all the protesters were Orthodox Jews, illustrating the religious backing of opposition to the removal of all 21 settlements from Gaza and four from the West Bank, set to begin in mid-August. Rabbis have declared that no Israeli government has the right to relinquish control of any part of biblical Israel.

A long blue tarp down the middle of the site separated men and women in Orthodox fashion.