Posted on 08/17/2005 9:14:11 PM PDT by 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.
I'm not. Actually I'm reminded of the leftists doing sit-ins in the 60s here in the Universities, except for the obviously brutal heat.
"Palestinians" only promise Jews, Christians, and other infidels the "peace of Saladin", in other words, room temperature. Doom be upon the palesimians!
I sense they are very, very inbred.
"A virgin? If she ain't gud enuff for her own family, she shore ain't gud enuff for our'n.
More likely it's a retread.
It's when THEY come in and start flaming away that they draw a lot of ire and fire, cgk. Not a nice way to say hello.
Now it's Abbas' turn to drag Hamas from the mosque.
Not holding my breath.
The same Naomi Wolf who was Al Gore's "fashion consultant"? That same evil stinking beyotch?
We may be forced to do it again, if Mexico is intent on starving their people into invading us... I don't want their nasty land though.
How about not trying to murder Jews every chance they get?
I'd rather have their (oil-rich) land than their third-world electorate. Unfortunately both come in the same package.
how do you get a screen capture from the tv?
"Can anyone name one thing the Palestinians have given up in the interest of peace?"
If by peace you mean "an absence of Jews," then they've given an awful lot of sons and sometimes daughters to that end.
He is a reservist and has not been called up. He told me he would have refused.
Alas, there are too many on this board that would like nothing better than to see that tiny blue space turn pink.
Your motives are not in question, they are readily apparent. Go away O bezotted one! Try Al Arabiya..
They don't show anything of the kind.
They won't declare a state because they don't want a "two state" solution, they want a "one state" solution:
For all the binge-posting that you do in favor of the PA and their "moderate, progressive leadership" you have nothing to say about this.
Yeah, WE have been occupying Mexican land (Texas) too. If you want to really get down to it, WE have been occupying Indian land since we got here!
What one needs to keep in mind, is that the only country ever to exist in that land was "Israel"....there NEVER has been a country called "Palestine"....run by "Palestinians".
Jews have lived in the land for THOUSANDS of years. They had a government which was overthrown...and in the last 50 years, the fought to GET THEIR LAND BACK! The Arabs have Jordon...Israel is not their land.
They seem to think that by terrorism and bombings, they will get what they want....oh wait, they are! West Bank is next, when do they get Jeruselem??
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