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Homesh, West Bank (CNSNews.com) -- Thousands of Israelis, taking advantage of a warm, holiday week, flocked to the West Bank settlement of Homesh on Thursday, one day after an even larger gathering in the Gaza Strip's Gush Katif settlement bloc.

The YESHA settlers' council organized the gatherings to protest Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan. Under the plan, the government will remove some 9,500 Israelis from all 21 Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank, starting this summer.

The plan has sparked emotional debate in Israel, with some citizens expressing shock that their own government would remove them from land that the Bible describes as their "eternal inheritance."

Sharon says he's ordered the evacuation for security reasons, and polls indicate his disengagement plan has majority support - although not in the affected settlements.

"We will be here forever!" proclaimed a banner stretched across the stage at the Homesh rally, held on a plateau on the edge of the hilltop community.

Knesset member Arye Eldad told the crowd that if striking workers can close down the country, so can the disengagement protestors. (Israel's Histadrut labor union, is famous for closing ports, utility services, post offices, banks, schools and municipalities in various labor disputes.)

On Wednesday, at the Gush Katif rally, Eldad angered many of his fellow politicians by calling for a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience against Sharon's disengagement plan.

Settler leaders are hoping that tens of thousands of Israelis will move into the settlements as the disengagement date approaches. The see strength in numbers: the more people who come to the settlements, the harder it will be to evacuate them.

At least 15,000 people visited Homesh on Thursday. Many of them said they also visited Hebron on Tuesday (Hebron is not part of the disengagement plan but it is a West Bank hotspot) and the Gush Katif settlements in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

With the road to Homesh closed to private cars, most Israelis arrived by buses chartered for the occasion; some drove to a nearby settlement and hopped on shuttle buses.

Resistance gathers steam

Yitzhik, from the Israeli city of Petah Tikvah, was visiting in Homesh with his wife and four children. He said he believes many people were there to see the situation for themselves, and he said he thinks some will return if the government proceeds with its evacuation plan this summer.

"I think that many people are waiting for the trigger [to be pulled]. Many people are like a spring that is pressed and waiting to move. Many people understand that it's not just the withdrawal of several [Jewish communities], it's about the whole of Israel," he added.

It's not about moving people out of their land, said Yitzhik's 16-year-old son Tomer. People are moved out of their homes when a new road needs to be built. He said it's about giving the land that belongs to the Jewish people to the Arabs.

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