GUSH KATIF, Gaza Strip, 28 June 2005 — Rightist Jews established a new Gaza outpost yesterday at a site where Israeli troops clashed with settlers while razing buildings to prepare for withdrawal from the occupied territory.
Witnesses said 30 defiant Jewish nationalists moved into an abandoned holiday cottage and planted a flag on the roof close to the ruins of 11 other old bungalows bulldozed on Sunday on the beach opposite the Gush Katif settlement bloc.
Twenty people resisting Sunday’s demolition were injured and one soldier was arrested for refusing orders, a foretaste of turmoil feared when Israel carries out its planned pullout from Gaza in August.
The United States is counting on the pullout to foster talks on a “road map” to Israeli-Palestinian peace, although a recent spate of violations has frayed a four-month-old cease-fire.
At the Gaza beach site, rightist leader Aryeh Yitzhaki told reporters “We have proven that the army cannot kick Jews off their land. The government has made a tactical mistake. It began the struggle 50 days too early. We will wear it down.”
“We can bring hundreds more civilians here to continue building on the land. There won’t be any (pullout).”
Brig. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, commander of Israeli forces in Gaza, told Israel Radio the army would move against the outpost, which he described as an improvised tent, “when the time is right”. Asked about the soldier who refused orders to carry out Sunday’s demolition, Kochavi said: “He had 150 comrades who did their duty.”
Polls show most Israelis support the plan to scrap all 21 settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank — the first uprooting of Jews from occupied land that Palestinians want for an independent state.
The pullout will delight the 1.3 million Palestinians in the cramped Gaza Strip, but they suspect Israel’s steady enlargement of major settlements in the occupied West Bank is designed to deny them land there for their future state. Vice Premier Shimon Peres said settlers had “no future in Gaza. Whatever is happening now is a passing experience and they will be out (of Gaza) in accordance with decisions of the Parliament and Cabinet,” he told Reuters.
Israeli authorities fear that a recent influx of rightists into the Gaza enclaves housing 8,500 settlers could complicate the evacuation and heighten the risk of violence.
Some Israeli commentators criticized the government for not sealing off the beach area before demolishing the buildings and for not explaining its actions.
