JERUSALEM, June 27 (Xinhuanet) -- Hundreds of drivers pulled over to the sides of major highways and junctions across Israel on Monday evening to protest the coming Israeli pullout from Gaza and urge people to "rethink" the withdrawal.

    The protest, dubbed "stop for a minute, think for a minute," was initiated by settlement council leaders who had called on the Israeli public to stop their cars on the roadsides at 6:00 pm (15:00 GMT) and stand for 15 minutes.

    Shortly after the protest started, several dozen vehicles stopped on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported.

    A hundred-odd vehicles stopped at other intersections around the country, according to the report.

    The nation-wide action, initiated by the Yesha Council, is the latest in a series of protests against the disengagement plan.

    According to the organizers' plans, some 4,000 vehicles were supposed to spread out on the sides of three major highways and protests of similar kind were also expected to take place on the main roads in the country's big cities.

    Although police urged people to rethink the protest which threatened to bring the country's main arteries to a standstill, the Yesha Council leaders refused to coordinate the protest with police, claiming that it would not disrupt traffic.

    Commander Kobi Cohen, head of the police operations wing, told Israel Radio that the protest did endanger life and could disrupt traffic.

    The protest "was not planned or coordinated with police and there are many places (roads) with no shoulders, or where the shoulders are problematic and therefore stopping on the sides of the road could in certain cases endanger the lives of those stopping or passing cars," he said.

    "Our primary task will be to prevent as many cars from stopping on the sides of the road," said Cohen.

    Israel is to evacuate some 8,500 settlers from all 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four of 120 in the West Bank in mid-August.

    The plan, marking the first time that Israel gives up lands it occupied in the 1967 Mideast war, has met with fierce opposition from some settlers and ultra-right nationalists. Enditem