Israeli Soldiers Clear Out Gaza Strip

Yahoo News ^ | August 17, 2005 | AMY TEIBEL

[Nachum]

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip - Jewish settlers sobbed and screamed, some of them ripping their shirts in mourning, as Israeli troops dragged them from homes and synagogues Wednesday — the beginning of the end of Israel's 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank, a settler killed four Palestinian laborers in a shooting rampage, which Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denounced as a twisted act of "Jewish terror" designed to stop the historic pullout.

Despite the escalation of Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the eviction of die-hard settlers and their nationalist supporters who flooded into Gaza in recent weeks moved forward — with anguish, anger and tears, but more swiftly and smoothly than anyone anticipated.

A convoy left before dawn Thursday, beginning the second day of the forcible evacuation. Troops entered the settlement of Kfar Darom, an extremist center where up to 2,000 settlers and backers have barricaded themselves in with concrete blocks, barbed wire and other barriers.

Sharon proposed his "disengagement plan" two years ago to ease Israel's security burden and help preserve the country's Jewish character by placing Gaza's 1.3 million Palestinians outside Israeli boundaries. Under the plan, Israel will remove all 21 settlements from Gaza and four from the West Bank — the first time it has removed veteran settlements from either area.

Some 14,000 unarmed Israeli soldiers and police entered six settlements throughout Wednesday, forcibly evicting residents who refused to leave voluntarily. According to the army, 1,842 people were evacuated Wednesday. Of 1,600 families in Gaza, only 600 remained by the end of the day.

Soldiers and settlers clashed, argued and hugged, reflecting intense and mixed emotions at the uprooting of settlers whose government years ago encouraged them to move to Gaza for the sake of Israel's security.

"It's impossible to watch this ... without tears in the eyes," Sharon said, but he insisted the pullout would make Israel safer.

Palestinian militants said they would refrain from retaliating for the West Bank shooting. Still, a mortar shell fell near Israeli soldiers in Gaza, without causing casualties, and Palestinian youngsters threw stones at an Israeli tank outside Neve Dekalim, Gaza's largest Jewish settlement. The tank crew responded with tear gas and fired shells into the sand.

Also, Israeli troops found a 22-pound explosives belt hidden in a water tank during a raid on the Palestinian town of Mawasi, near a Gaza settlement. Four Palestinians were arrested, the army said.

The day was filled with heart-rending scenes as troops carried settlers out of homes, synagogues, even nursery schools.

Soldiers joined anti-withdrawal protesters in prayer before evicting them. An elderly rabbi hugged a Torah scroll as he was escorted away. A young man read from his prayer book as soldiers carried him to a bus. Teenagers burned tires in streets in last acts of defiance.

Under a willow tree at a children's nursery, mothers clutched babies as troops loaded diapers and toys onto buses for evacuation.

A soldier with tears in her eyes held a toddler in her arms, gave him some candy and implored, "Where is his mother?" Another soldier waved away flies from a toddler lying in a stroller.

By evening, five of the six settlements that troops entered in the morning were cleared, with resisters remaining only in Neve Dekalim — for months the epicenter of resistance.

Palestinian militants are portraying the pullout as a victory for their suicide bombings and rocket attacks. Some fear militants will resume bloodshed once Israel's Gaza withdrawal is complete.

Israelis and Palestinians have been cooperating to prevent militant violence during the pullout, though lately Jewish extremists have caused the most concern. Wednesday's attack was the second on Palestinians by Israelis in two weeks. On Aug. 4, a 19-year-old Israeli deserter opened fire on a bus, killing four Israeli Arabs.

Sharon denounced the West Bank shooting as "an act of Jewish terror against innocent Palestinians out of twisted thinking." Still, the prime minister was unlikely to allow the incident to derail the pullout — an operation on which he has staked his political career.

The gunman, identified as Asher Weisgan, 40, from the West Bank settlement of Shvut Rahel, was a driver who transported Palestinian laborers to the industrial zone of the nearby settlement of Shilo every day. At the end of the work day, he picked up the workers and briefly stopped at a security post.

He got out of his car, seized the weapon from the guard at knifepoint and fired from close range on two workers in his vehicle. He kept shooting, killing a third worker and wounding two others outside the car. One of them died later.

Hamas said it would not immediately retaliate to enable the Gaza pullout to proceed.

"But if these crimes continue, factions will not stand by silently," said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri

Several hundred settlers broke out of Kfar Darom, a settlement due to be evacuated in the next few days, pushed large cinderblocks off a bridge and tried to burn down an Arab house, witnesses said. Palestinians threw stones at the settlers until Israeli troops arrived, doused the fire and pushed the settlers back into the settlement.

In general, however, the evictions were peaceful. While settlers routinely carry weapons, they displayed none when the columns of soldiers and police marched into their communities.

Terje Roed-Larsen, who spent 12 years trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on behalf of the United Nations, praised Sharon for keeping the promise he made nearly two years ago.

"However, if this is the first step and the last step, I'm afraid that within months we will be back into a situation where violence and terrorism will preavail again and the living conditions of the citizens of Gaza will continue to deteriorate," Roed-Larsen, who stepped down in December as the U.N.'s top Mideast envoy, warned in an interview.

The day's worst act of protest was the self-immolation of a 54-year-old woman from the West Bank at a police roadblock in southern Israel. She suffered life-threatening burns on 70 percent of her body, police and hospital officials said.

In Neve Dekalim, a man stood before a line of soldiers and held up his daughter, about 10 years old. "Here. Take her. Expel her. Please take her, you are such a hero," he said, pouring scorn on the troops. The little girl, crying, looked up at the policeman and her father in sad confusion.

___

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed to this report from the United Nations.

[Nachum]

Palestinian militants are portraying the pullout as a victory for their suicide bombings and rocket attacks. Some fear militants will resume bloodshed once Israel's Gaza withdrawal is complete.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

Some fear militants will resume bloodshed once Israel's Gaza withdrawal is complete.

The Israel will have no qualms about blowing Gaza from the face of the earth.

[xmm0]

Or just make more concessions. Heck, maybe Sharon can get his own military to do suicide bombings on other Jews.

1. muslim bombers kill jews
2. jews build walls
3. jews take other jews from their homes
4. muslims (rightly) celebrate thier victory
5. repeat

[bored at work]

Despite the escalation of Israeli-Palestinian tensions

WHAT? Since when have the tensions not been escalating/escalated? Not in my life time . . .

[trubluolyguy]

"Israeli soldiers clear out Gaza Strip"


IOW, terrorism pays.

[Almondjoy]

Hmmm... and where are the posts denouncing the Jewish man who killed 4 people?

I guess I'll be the first.

[silentknight]

Thank the Bush Administration for this one folks. I guess everyone here knows that Israel asked the United States for TWO more BILLION dollars to help cover the cost of all of this.

FOX News reported on it earlier this afternoon.

I do not understand why this administration feels that giving up land is the answer. I really don't believe this is going to end anything.

[Cinnamon]

Palestinians will have no excuse now for their terrorism tactics... they either clena up or go down in flames

[KittyKares]

I really don't believe this is going to end anything.

I agree. The Palestinians are already saying that next is the West Bank and Jerusalem. They will not be satisfied until there is no Israel.

[silentknight]

Quote
"Palestinians will have no excuse now for their terrorism tactics... they either clena up or go down in flames"

Yes they will have an excuse. They also want the West Bank...and some of them want more than that. There is always an excuse. I doubt they go down in flames either. Have they yet?

They have more now than they had a year ago. They will have more before it is over.

[eddiemunster]

These animals will turn it into a toilet just like Palestine. I don't know what the hell Bush is thinking.

[Cinnamon Girl]

Have they ever needed an excuse? This will just make it easier for Hamas to hit targets in Israel they couldn't reach so well before.

[Polybius]

1. muslim bombers kill jews
2. jews build walls
3. jews take other jews from their homes
4. muslims (rightly) celebrate thier victory
5. repeat

How do the Palestinians "repeat" when they no longer have access to easy Jewish targets?

How do the Palestinians "repeat" when the Jewish targets are on the other side of the Israeli Wall and the full might of the IDF is defending the Wall?

If you want a "rinse and repeat" cycle, keep Israelis living side by side to one million homicidal maniacs who double their numbers with every generation.

The Palestinians can celebrate all they want but, next year, they will have nobody but themselves to kill and they will be left to rot in a cesspool of their own making.

[derllak]

The Palestinians are already saying that next is the West Bank and Jerusalem. They will not be satisfied until there is no Israel.

Israel needs to make it clear right now that Jerusalem is not negotiable. Otherwise this sh** is just going to continue for another 30+ years. Just say "sorry suckers, it's ours, we won it fair and square and we ain't giving it back no matter what". The Arabs will either have to accept it, or fight. And now that Gaza is no longer an Israeli territory and is basically another nation state, if they fight then it's a war (not an uprising) and by by Arabs.

[Polybius]

Yes they will have an excuse. They also want the West Bank...and some of them want more than that. There is always an excuse. I doubt they go down in flames either. Have they yet? They have more now than they had a year ago. They will have more before it is over.

Yes. They will have more.

They will have everything that is on their side of the Israeli Wall.

After that, there is no reason for an Israeli civilian to have to see a non-Israeli Palestinian ever again.

Why would any nation want to posses land populated by over 5.3 million homicidal maniacs who want to murder them?

That's no way to live.

You either exterminate the 5.3 million homicidal maniacs or you totally isolate those homicidal maniacs from you.

The Israeli Government has chosen Door Number Two.

[ppaul]

The beginning of sorrows...
-- Matthew 24:8 (KJV)

[ppaul]

Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler shake hands at the Munich Conference in 1938.
This resulted in the pact, signed 29 September, which recognized the German annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in return for a promise that there would be no further aggression. This policy of appeasement failed to prevent the outbreak of World War II.

[tet68]

This policy of appeasement failed to prevent CAUSED the outbreak of World War II.

[DefiantZERO]

An Israeli kills 4 Illegitimates, and it's 'Jewish terror'. Illegitimate terrorists kill thousands since Israel was born, and you don't see the word terror anywhere.