KFAR MAIMON, Israel (AP) – There were singalongs, prayers, portable toilets and ice pops in the shade: Thousands of Jewish settlers and their supporters transformed this village into a protest camp Tuesday after police blocked them from marching to Gaza.

The scene was cheerful, but it thinly masked the anger of hard-liners frustrated in their plan to bring reinforcements to Gaza’s 9,000 Jewish settlers and thwart Israel’s August withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

When protesters tried to force their way past security forces sealing off the village, police pushed back. The two sides traded punches, and police arrested 18 demonstrators in the biggest confrontation yet over the planned pullout.

The protesters said they would remain in Kfar Maimon and try to march again today, and the next day and the next. The government said it would stop them.

“As long as this terrible decision stands (to withdraw from Gaza), there will be a constant presence to prevent this,” settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein told Israel Army Radio.

Demonstrators had planned a three-day march beginning Monday in the southern Israeli town of Netivot and ending at the Kissufim crossing into Gaza, 15 miles away.

The government outlawed the march – on top of an order last week barring nonresidents from crossing into Gaza – and sent 20,000 police and soldiers to set up checkpoints and block the march.

Thousands of marchers, many of them teenagers and families with young children, stayed overnight in Kfar Maimon, 12 miles from the Gaza crossing. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said they would not get any closer.

“My orders are unequivocal, not to let this march reach Gush Katif,” Mofaz told Israel TV, referring to the main cluster of Gaza settlements.

The protesters in Kfar Maimon numbered fewer than 10,000 by a police count. Dozens of portable toilets and tanks of drinking water were trucked in, and vendors sold a constantly replenished supply of sandwiches and sodas.

Many sought cover from the brutal summer sun under tarps strung from trees. Nearly everyone sucked on orange ice pops – the protesters’ adopted color – sold in commemorative Gush Katif wrappers. One teenager hawked an orange car deodorizer in the shape of Israel.

A sound truck played anti-pullout songs, including one rocker with the chorus “Jews don’t expel Jews,” punctuated by an energetic guitar solo and a Doors-inspired keyboard track. A small crowd gathered around a man playing a ram’s horn, backed by a drum line.

“It looks very pastoral, but under the surface there is a lot of anger and humiliation,” said protester Avraham Weiss, 30, as he sat on a shaded log, studying for a university exam on algorithms.

“It’s been more than a year and a half and people feel they have been written off, have no way to express their feelings and beliefs,” he said.

The demonstration could shape up as the last major stand by protesters trying to scuttle the withdrawal from 21 Gaza settlements and four in the northern West Bank.

But their defiance and willingness to tangle with the authorities could also foreshadow the difficulties awaiting the government as it tries to remove the 9,000 residents from the condemned settlements.

The government said it would not be cowed by demonstrations and was determined to push through with the “disengagement” plan, which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unveiled a year and a half ago.

“Ariel Sharon is not scared of 20,000 or 50,000 marching settlers,” Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said.

The government says the pullout would make Israel more secure and strengthen its hold on larger West Bank settlements.

The settlers say that giving up Gaza after 4 1/2 years of violence, would encourage more attacks by Palestinian militants.

In the West Bank village of Yamoun, two Palestinian militants were killed Tuesday in a gunbattle with the military as soldiers surrounded their hideout, the army said. The army later bulldozed the building.

Israel has intensified arrest raids of militants since six Israelis were killed in attacks last week. Israel carried out several air strikes last week, killing six Hamas militants.

The flare in violence also increased tensions between Hamas militants and the Palestinian security services, which promised to stop Hamas’ relentless rocket and mortar barrages of Israeli targets.

Palestinian police and Hamas gunmen clashed Tuesday in Gaza, exchanging fire, burning cars and lobbing hand grenades. Nine Palestinian police were wounded, authorities said.

The fighting erupted after the offices of two Hamas-affiliated research companies were burned down, residents said. In a separate incident, Palestinian police refused to stop at a makeshift roadblock in a Hamas stronghold, sparking a gunbattle, Palestinian authorities said.

Palestinian militants linked to the ruling Fatah movement put their gunmen on high alert and threatened to retaliate if attacked by Hamas.

Tensions between Hamas, which is using rockets to try to prove it is driving Israel out of Gaza, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is trying to salvage a 5-month-old cease-fire with Israel, have risen in recent days as Abbas came under increasing U.S. and Israeli pressure to crack down on the militants.