Sunday, September 11 2005 17:15 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Jerusalem: In a landmark vote, the Israeli Cabinet today (Sept 11, 2005) unanimously approved the withdrawal of its troops from the Gaza Strip, ending 38 years of occupation of the area.

In yet another decision with far-reaching consequences, the Cabinet also gave a nod to pullout of troops from the Philadelphi route, along the Gaza-Egypt border, where Egyptian and Palestinian forces began their deployment yesterday (Sept 10, 2005).

Palestinians have argued that an Israeli presence on the route would keep them choked, blocking there only way to interact with the outer world.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will begin to leave the Gaza Strip tonight and all the troops are expected to be out of the area by tomorrow morning.

The last potential stumbling block, a wrangle over the fate of around 20 synagogues in Gaza, was brushed aside when ministers voted by majority to leave the structures still standing and their fate up to the Palestinians.

A vote to demolish the structures could have delayed the pullout by another 24 hours, postponing a scheduled handover ceremony to Palestinian security forces at Erez crossing.

Senior ministers in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet had earlier resisted the move to dismantle the synagogues even though the Supreme Court has given a go ahead to it. The Palestinian Authority had refused to give any guarantees on protecting the religious structures following withdrawal.

"It's better for us and for you to destroy the synagogues," Jibril Rajoub, security adviser to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Israel Radio. "I think the synagogues are symbols of the occupation," he said.

The Ministers, locked in a thorny debate over the issue of demolishing the synagogues in the evacuated settlements, today voted 14-2 against the demolition with Labour ministers Ophir Pines-Paz and Haim Ramon only supporting such a move.

Sharon told the cabinet before the vote that he opposed the demolition, but referred to the synagogue buildings, from which all the sacred objects have been removed, as "houses that were used as synagogues," Itim news agency reported.

Today's Cabinet vote to end military rule over Gaza was largely symbolic. Israel has already withdrawn all of its 8,500 settlers from Gaza.

The IDF's evacuation of the Philadelphi route is to take place simultaneously with the rest of the Gaza withdrawal.

Some 200 Egyptian border policemen were deployed yesterday in Rafah on the their side of the border as part of an agreement with Israel under which Cairo will station 750 policemen along the Philadelphi route to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt to Gaza.

If everything goes as per schedule then Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi, commander of the IDF troops in Gaza, will be the last Israeli to leave the Gaza Strip tomorrow morning.

Kochavi will take part in a joint ceremony with the Palestinians at the Erez crossing later today in which IDF officers will give their Palestinian counterparts maps detailing Gaza's water, electricity and sewage infrastructure.