JERUSALEM, Sept. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- Israel's cabinet has approved the start of the final stage of Gaza pullout, heralding the end of Israel's 38-year occupation of the coastal strip, officials said Sunday.

    Following a unanimous vote of the cabinet ministers, some 3,000 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers will begin on Sunday night its final withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The process is expected to be complete by 8:00 a.m. (0500 GMT) on Monday.

    The cabinet also approved the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Philadelphi route along the Gaza-Egypt border, and its evacuation is to take place simultaneously with the rest of the Gaza withdrawal.

    On Saturday morning, 200 Egyptian border police began deploying on the Egyptian side of the border, as part of the agreement with Israel to deploy 750 Egyptian border police along the Philadelphi route to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt to Gaza.

    On the thorny issue of the demolition of synagogues in Gaza, a majority of the ministers appear to support the proposal by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz to leave the synagogues intact, and a cabinet decision to raze the buildings is expected to delay withdrawal by a few hours to one day.

    Israeli rabbis oppose the demolition of the synagogues, claiming it is more of a blasphemy to demolish them by Jews than leave them at the mercy of the Palestinians.

    The Palestinians have refused to take responsibility for the synagogues.

    Over the past few days, the IDF have dismantled the infrastructure of three military outposts along the Philadelphi route. The steel and concrete wall Israel constructed along the route in recent years will not be dismantled, and the IDF Gaza Division headquarters is the only building that will be transferred intact to the Palestinians.

    A handover ceremony will be held later Sunday by the Israeli and Palestinians officials to mark the formal transfer of the Gaza Strip, captured by Israel together with the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, to the Palestinian control.

    The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) won't take part in the ceremony partly to protest Israel's failure to conclude critical agreements on border crossings, a senior Palestinian official said.

    IDF sources said the army has no information about a Palestinian boycott, and that the ceremony will take place as planned.

    The final withdrawal followed the evacuation of some 9,000 Jewish settlers from all 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank in August, Israel's first withdrawal from lands the Palestinians want for a state.

    However, the Palestinians fear the Gaza pullout, termed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as "disengagement" from violence with the Palestinians, is just a ruse used by Israel to hold permanently onto larger West Bank settlements. Enditem