JERUSALEM - Israel celebrated 57 years of statehood Thursday under blanket security, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned that Palestinian militants may abandon a de facto truce after Israel leaves the Gaza Strip.
Amid fears that Islamist group Hamas could make hefty gains in imminent Palestinian parliamentary elections and calls in Israel to re-think its pullout as a result, a senior official mooted reasons to delay the July polls.
Israel is on track to withdraw all soldiers and 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza, as well as dismantle four isolated settlements in the northern West Bank, from mid-August.
In principle, the Palestinians welcome Israel's departure from any occupied territory, but officials have slammed Sharon's intention to use the pullout to widen the borders of the Jewish state in the West Bank, to the east.
"It is not certain that Palestinian terrorist groups will respect the truce after our withdrawal," Sharon told an independence-day ceremony in Jerusalem.
"I do not know if Israel's problems will be resolved after the mission I am tasked with is accomplished," he added.
Palestinian armed groups, which have observed an unofficial "quiet period" since late January had agreed to extend the truce until the end of the year, conditional on an end to Israeli aggression.
In Gaza, tens of thousands of settlers and their supporters converged on the southern Gush Katif settlement bloc to celebrate what should be their last independence day in the Palestinian territory.
In the nearby settlement of Kfar Darom, a new synagogue was inaugurated barely three months before a government-led pullout is to begin.
As senior government figures continue to bitterly criticise the pullout, which Sharon has vowed to see through come what may, Jewish settlers have pledged to defy any move to remove them from the territory.
"We have faith that we will live here forever," said Abigail Bitton, widowed when her teacher husband was killed in a Palestinian bombing in 2000. "The message from the dead is to live here and to continue to build here."
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom has insisted twice this week that Israel cancel its planned pullout from Gaza should Hamas triumph in parliamentary polls scheduled for July 14 across the Palestinian territories.
Although the Palestinian Authority continues to stick publicly to the timetable for the ballot, an aide of leader Mahmud Abbas championed what he felt were convincing reasons for a delay in a newspaper interview.
"There are good, logical, judicial and political reasons," to delay voting, Tayeb Abdelrahim was quoted as saying in Al-Quds, citing the time required to formalise various amendments to the electoral law.
Any delay, which must be ordered by Abbas, would be discussed by the various Palestinian factions, Abdelrahim added.
Some within the dominant Fatah party, to which Abbas and Abdelrahim belong, are understood to favour a delay, fearing that Hamas could make major inroads in the elections which the radical group is contesting for the first time.
Abbas however had made clear he was not in favour of a delay, which would also have been fiercely contested by Hamas.
Israelis feted their independence under top-notch security, as the territories remained sealed off until Saturday and police patrolled along the demarcation line with the West Bank, Jerusalem and at major ceremonies.
A Katyusha-type rocket from southern Lebanon, which military sources said was probably fired by a Palestinian group, damaged a factory in the northern Israeli town of Shlomi, after fireworks went off marking independence day.
05/12/2005 12:13 GMT