KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip, 3 August 2005 — Fatah, the ruling Palestinian party, has begun recruiting a “popular army” responsible for helping to keep law and order after Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip, a spokesman said yesterday.
The volunteer force, which Fatah hopes will number some 1,500 people, is being set up on the orders of party leader Faruq Kaddumi, who is based in Tunis, one of his spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Suleiman Al-Farra, told AFP.
“We have decided to create a popular army to help the Palestinian Authority take things in hand after Israeli forces withdraw from the Gaza Strip,” Farra said, 15 days before the planned pullout is to begin.
Around 250 volunteers make up the kernel of the new group, which yesterday was being put through fitness exercises in a football ground in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, said an AFP correspondent.
“Training began on Monday under national security officers and Palestinian police,” said Farra. “The popular army will consist of 1,500 volunteers throughout the whole of the Gaza Strip,” he added.
The creation of a Fatah “popular army” reflects a desire among the previously dominant Palestinian faction to flex its muscles against Hamas, which is particularly strong in Gaza.
Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Mahmud Zahar, said last month the movement would agree to any move to disarm its members in the aftermath of the imminent Israeli withdrawal from the territory.
Meanwhile, Israeli police and troops fanned out in force around the Gaza Strip yesterday to prevent any last effort by Jewish settlers and their sympathizers to scupper this month’s withdrawal from the occupied territory.
Ultranationalists gathered in Sderot, a southern Israeli town near the Gaza border, to demonstrate against a pullout plan they say betrays Jewish claims on biblical land and rewards a 4-1/2-year-old Palestinian uprising.
Settler leaders vowed thousands of protesters expected at the Sderot rally would march to the Gaza frontier today out of Palestinian rocket range in another Israeli town, Ofakim, 20 kilometers from the border.
“Tomorrow night (Wednesday) we will resume the march, to Gush Katif. We will do so with determination, but non-violently,” settler leader Zviki Bar-Hai said in Sderot.
Police vowed to stop any attempt to enter any of the 21 settlements due to be evacuated from Aug. 17 under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to “disengage” from Gaza.
“We won’t allow them into Gush Katif,” local police commander Effi Mor told reporters.
The government at first banned the Sderot rally. Officials cited a risk of Palestinian rocket fire or that protesters could slip past an army blockade on Gaza and reinforce settlers who have sworn to resist evacuation.
Relenting after late-night talks with the YESHA settler council, the government said a small-scale rally could go ahead on the understanding protesters would continue from Sderot to Ofakim, and then disperse.
