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.
Here is Hamas' response to Israel's sacrifice:
"NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza – Israel's evacuation of Gaza's Jewish communities is a victory for "Palestinian resistance" and the beginning of the destruction of the Jewish state, senior Hamas leaders said this week, announcing they would next focus their efforts on removing Israel from the West Bank.
"The resistance and the steadfastness of our people forced the Zionists to withdraw," overall Hamas leader Khaled Meshal told reporters from Beirut. "The resistance is capable of ending the Israeli occupation and achieving all our rights. The armed struggle is the only strategy that Hamas possesses."
Meshal said Wednesday that Hamas would refuse any efforts by the Palestinian Authority or the international community to force his terror organization to disarm but reiterated he doesn't want to confront the PA.
"As long as Palestinian lands remain under occupation, Hamas won't lay down its weapons. ... Hamas is not competing with the Palestinian Authority, but we reject attempts to monopolize power."
Mahmoud Zahar, Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, explained that now that his organization has taken charge in Gaza, it will next focus efforts on forcing Israel from the West Bank.
"Now, after the victory in the Gaza Strip, we will transfer the struggle first to the West Bank and later to Jerusalem," Zahar told a European newspaper this week. "We will continue the struggle until we liberate all our lands. This is an important day for the Palestinians and proof that the armed struggle has born fruit."
Zahar went on to explain Hamas would not stop its attacks until all of Israel is destroyed:
"Neither the liberation of the Gaza Strip, nor the liberation of the West Bank or even Jerusalem will suffice us. Hamas will pursue the armed struggle until the liberation of all our lands. We don't recognize the state of Israel or its right to hold onto one inch of Palestine. Palestine is an Islamic land belonging to all the Muslims."
The comments coincide with recent Hamas announcements it will begin the next phase of its war to destroy the Jewish state by launching Qassam rockets at Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and West Bank communities instead of focusing on suicide bombings.
As WND reported, Hamas last month announced on its website: "Afula, Hadera, Beit She'an, Netanya, Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and other cities will all fall within the range of the Qassam rocket. ... The implication is that this rocket, which was previously looked upon with disdain by many, will serve as the weapon of choice in the coming period of time, as the acts of suicide martyrdom served as the weapon of choice during all the previous years."
The site continued: "From a technical standpoint, the Zionist army presently does not have any means to intercept an airborne Qassam rocket. The only possibility, therefore, of stopping the fire, if possible, is to strike the operating cells or the rockets themselves, a moment before they are launched.
"A pre-emptive strike against the attacking cell is a complicated and almost impossible affair. According to the assessments of the Zionist army, the members of the resistance bring the missiles in vans and unload them under the cover of agricultural activity. This makes them more difficult to expose. Furthermore, the timeframe available to the Zionist forces is a quarter of an hour at the most. It takes that long for the resistance members to aim the rockets and activate them at a distance using an electronic timer. To foil the action, the army needs to keep combat helicopters in the air for 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It is, therefore, highly bothersome."
The Hamas site went on to explain that to fire on Jerusalem and other Israeli cities, the terror group doesn't need to improve the range of the current Qassam rocket it uses.
"Jerusalem and other cities will all fall within the range of the Qassam 1 rocket, and there will not even be need for the Qassam 2 rocket."
Israeli retaliatory raids will not establish deterrence against missile launchings, Hamas stated.
"The only solution, as far as the Zionist establishment is concerned, is severe retaliation for every Qassam rocket launched, in order to teach the Palestinians a lesson and make them think a thousand times before launching any kind of rocket. [But] have all the previous mass murders and the acts of hostility carried out as collective punishment quenched the fire of resistance, or, rather, have they served as a catalyst for the increasing sophistication of the creative methods of the resistance [factions]?"
Israeli security sources say Hamas has been using time gained from a cease-fire agreement signed in February by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to stockpile weapons and extend its Qassam manufacturing capabilities to Judea and Samaria.
In March, the Israeli Defense Forces destroyed a large Qassam laboratory in the Samarian village of Al-Yamoun. Earlier, the army arrested 11 members of a Hamas cell in Samaria who admitted during interrogation to producing Qassam rockets and constructing a laboratory for the manufacturing of heavy explosives.
Qassams are relatively unsophisticated steel rockets, about four feet in length, filled with explosives and fuel. The rockets lack a guidance system and are launched by terrorists in nearby towns who reportedly use the rocket's trajectory and known travel distance to aim at a particular Jewish community.
About 20 percent of Qassams do not explode upon impact.
"As far as rockets go, they may be low tech, but if they land in a population center, they're incredibly deadly," Ami Shaked, chief security coordinator for Gaza's Jewish communities, told WND.
Of particular concern for the Israeli Defense Forces is the development of longer-range Qassam missiles that could strike Jerusalem if launched from certain West Bank areas.
In August 2003, a Qassam traveled five miles from the Gaza Strip into Israel and landed near Ashkelon, the farthest a Qassam rocket has penetrated.
Hamas also recently started manufacturing a new rocket, the Nasser 3, capable of reaching farther than even the updated Qassam, security sources said."
from http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45859
There never was an excuse for terrorism, but that little fact never stopped them before. Like most losers, the only creative bone in their body is the one that generates excuses.
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