Some Jewish settlers denounced President George W. Bush's backing of a pullout from Gaza as a betrayal even though he broke with decades of Middle East policy at the Israeli prime minister's behest on Wednesday.

Right-wing settler supporters assailed Mr Bush's support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from most settlements in the Gaza Strip, while other Israelis questioned whether the plan would ever actually be put into effect.

"When I watched President Bush talking now about uprooting us... I felt that he's got no idea what he's talking about because he knows very well that with Arabs you cannot come to an agreement," said Gaza settler Rivka Goldschmidt.

She accused Mr Sharon of offering up the Gush Katif settlement bloc where she lives as "a present as an answer to their (Palestinian) terror".

Mr Bush said after meeting Mr Sharon on Wednesday that Israel could keep some of the Arab land it captured in the 1967 Middle East war. He coupled the statement with an endorsement of Mr Sharon's unilateral Gaza pullout plan and a negation of any right of return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie, seeing the sum of all his people's fears realised, immediately denounced the statement as unacceptable.

Some Israeli commentators applauded Mr Bush: "It was very impressive," Labour legislator Ofir Pines-Paz said.

What Mr Bush said "is a very significant change in American policy," and gave Israel an advantage over the Palestinians, said Itamar Rabinovich, a Middle East expert of Tel Aviv University and a former Israeli ambassador to Washington.

But many of the 230,000 Jewish settlers who live among 3.6 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip feel betrayed by Sharon, a longtime champion of their cause.

In Neveh Dekalim, several hundred settlers said prayers and one leader vowed to mount a "very tough struggle" to persuade 200,000 members of Sharon's rightist Likud Party to vote down the withdrawal in a planned May 2 referendum.

Dozens of settlers gathered at a disputed site in the West Bank city of Hebron to re-erect an outpost long dismantled by the army. Police arrested two settlers at the site, Israeli media said.

Opinion polls show about 60 per cent of Israelis would favour an evacuation from Gaza, but far fewer from the West Bank, which has greater biblical significance.

While many Israelis would favour the Gaza plan, many were sceptical of the prospect of seeing it carried out. Some noted the threat to Mr Sharon's future posed by a corruption scandal.

Israeli prosecutors have recommended charging Mr Sharon for bribery over an abortive Greek Island real estate deal, and the state attorney general has promised a decision within weeks.

Left-wing lawmaker Yossi Sarid said the Gaza idea was too sketchy. "I'm in favour of the disengagement plan, but I'm not sure there is a plan at all," Dr Sarid said.

Reactions to Bush were mixed in Sharon's party. Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz hailed his comments as a "milestone", but other Likud members complained US policy was too vague.

"The harvest is small and the disappointment is great," cabinet minister Uzi Landau said, vowing that Mr Bush's promises would not deter him from seeking to foil the Gaza pullout when the party votes on it next month.

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