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.
"As I'm watching the scenes from Gaza today, I'm suddenly struck with a juxtaposition between this and the riot scenes from Soylent Green..."
Ssssshhhhhhhhhh......
Gefilta fish is ..... People..........
Wow. I went there for the first time and read both your essay and about 20 comments.
I understand.
I recorded FOX on my dvd for 3 hours while the evacuation was happening, played it up here on my laptop. What a sad sight for both groups of Israelis.
Hamas, as a bona-fide terrorist organization, has always been difficult to fight. Terrorist organizations have the luxury of being stateless - often transcending conventional borders. Yasser Arafat feared elections because he knew that Hamas would easily take the majority - thereby unseating him as the self-proclaimed leader of the Palestinians. Now we see that Hamas has taken a huge role in the governance of Palestine as the result of elections since Arafat's death.
Assume, for a minute that Israel succeeds in providing the Palestinians with a country of their own complete with borders, self-government and responsibility. Assume again that Hamas (as is it's nature) continues with the terrorism. Doesn't this then constitute an "act of war" by one state against another?
The United States had a fairly simple task in mounting an attack against Afghanistan - where Al Qaeda was centralized and, to a certain extent, actively involved in the tacit governance of that country. It has since become a far more difficult prospect to fight Al Qaeda.
Right. I'm sure. Just like the Jews of Europe "got over" being "evacuated" from their homes to the ghettos in Warsaw, Vilna, the Ukraine, etc. They "got over it" in places like Treblinka, Dachau, and Auschwitz. I suppose you think they did "the right thing" then, too. Heil "the final solution!" Heil "peace in our time!"
You know, back then, the Nazis understood the debilitating and deleterious effect it would have on the people's resolve if they could somehow set Jew upon Jew in aiding and abetting their pogroms. That is why they established the capo system in the camps and the Judenrats in the ghettos. This time the worldwide community that stands against Israel has cowed the Israeli government into similar action, their soldiers carrying out the acts of abuse against their brother Jews. Israel will pay a price for this far greater than any pittance of "compensation" they might offer their citizens. They have paid for this act at a price being a piece of their national soul, and that is something you can't put a price tag on.
I know Barry Chamish is Way Out There, but on his web site he claims that Israel is importing foreign non-Jewish soldiers to do the expelling, since many Jewish soldiers would refuse to do so.
Killing of innocents is wrong period. Any other conclusion is ridculous.
Relax.. I wanted to call out the Joo haters.. but obviously I only got the good guys to respond.
Our "progressives" are already arguing for the Israeli "wall" to be torn down. They won't be happy until Israel is gone.
"Yay! Now another place is Jew-free!"
Yes, the German term was judenrein - Jew-clean.
The state of Israel will be stronger after this.
Philistines?
Interesting.
Few seem to get it.
Even on this website.
So far Abbas is saying the right things and seems to be doing the right things. I don't have any doubt that President Bush will call him on it if that changes, like he did with Arafat.
Once they have a state they will likely have to change it. He'd probably just as soon not open that can of worms now.
-Eric
You would think that changing the stationary would be a step in the right direction. Furthermore, the words and actions all match the symbol.
So far Abbas is saying the right things and seems to be doing the right things.
What right things has he been saying. All I have heard is "Here are more concessions we want from Israel!"
What right things is he doing? Not even lifting a finger to do his minimal responsibilities.
Inviting Hamas to join the government is a step in the right direction?
Once they have a state they will likely have to change it.
You are freaking kidding me, right? That's like a girl saying about her abusive boyfriend, "once we're married, he will change."
"Once they have a state they will likely have to change it."
You are freaking kidding me, right? That's like a girl saying about her abusive boyfriend, "once we're married, he will change."
Social workers call that the "Cycle of Abuse."
Appeasing the perpetrator only results in increased abuse and violence.
But that's why it is a "cycle."
And victims never seem to get it.
And the perps get what they want.
Yours was a well thought, well argued and well spoken post. I salute and concur!
20% of the current population of Israel is Arab or 1.2 million Arabs now living inside the territorial borders of Israel.
That will grow to 24% in the next decade or so.
By way of contrast, 12.5% of the US population is black and 13% of the US population is Hispanic-Latino.
Israeli politics will be heavily influenced in future years by such a large and politically active minority group.
An analogy is how blacks and Latinos have influenced American politics over the last 50 years. The growing size of the Arab population of Israel has a serious impact on Israel's current "land for peace" policies.
Another analogy: Texas just last week became the 4th US state to have a non-white majority joining Hawaii, California and New Mexico in that category.
..............................the majority of Israelis no longer support the eviction of all the Jewish communities from tiny Gaza. The latest polls have established this.
Secondly, the West Bank and Gaza were not occupied. They were territories taken by Israel in a war of survival, the 6-Day War. Israel actually offered Egypt Gaza after the war. They didn't want it (the Egyptians.) The strip of land where the Jews had their communities was not inhabited, just sand. The Arabs had no homes there in Gush Darom, Gush Katif, Neve Dekalim. See photos.
The west bank is quite another story.
By the way, when these areas were part of Jordan, why didn't the Palestinians demonstrate and commit acts of terror to have their own state? What is the logic there? What they have told me when I speak to Arabs is that they want their stolen land. By that they mean Tel Aviv, Haifa, Tsvat, Bat Yam, Rehovot, etc., the whole area.
A two-state solution will never do for people who feel robbed. They could tolerate Jordanian sovereignty, but never Jewish. That's it in a nutshell.
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