JERUSALEM, 22 July 2005 — Prepared to incur the wrath of settlers rather than see Israel grind to a standstill under mass protests, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appears ready to rip up the timetable for his Gaza Strip pullout plan.
For weeks extremists have caused major disruption by blockading main roads. Some 15,000 troops and police spent the last three days bogged down in a standoff with thousands of protestors determined to force their way into Gaza.
More than 300 hardliners were arrested during the mass rally, which culminated in an aborted attempt to force their way into the main settlement bloc of Gush Katif — sealed off to public access for a week.
Wary of seeing Israel paralyzed by protests, with security services already on maximum alert for the first time since the US invasion of Iraq, officials said the pullout could be brought forward from its Aug. 17 due date.
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert confirmed that from a legal point of view, the operation could begin today.
“After the demonstrations by opponents of the disengagement over the last few days and the attempts to infiltrate Gush Katif, it is possible that it could be done more quickly in order to avoid new confrontations,” said a source close to Sharon.
“Sharon knows opinion is on his side. He wants to capitalize on that to end the opposition. That’s why the idea of bringing forward the date of withdrawal is being looked at,” said another source.
With all government and legal obstacles to disengagement thrown aside, settlers have done all they can to impede the pullout through a series of demonstrations and inciting soldiers to disobey evacuation orders.
But right-wingers are furious with Sharon for mobilizing such enormous numbers of police and soldiers to prevent the settlers from marching on Gush Katif, provoking a personal diatribe against Sharon as an inhuman dictator.
“It’s true, Sharon is not a human being,” Pinhas Wallerstein, one of the main settler leaders who organized this week’s rally in southern Israel, told army radio yesterday.
“It’s this kind of talk that we heard in Israel before the death of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and which contributed to his assassination,” said Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar.
A further advantage in catapulting forward the evacuation date is that the heady days of protest have already left security forces tired.
If things continue, police and soldiers could be completely drained before mid-August when the operation is scheduled to begin.
“The pullout protestors are increasingly being seen as a burden stopping police and the army from doing their work, in other words keeping security to avoid Palestinian attacks,” said a source close to Sharon.
But many observers believe it unlikely that the pullout is to be brought forward in practice.
The struggle between the government and the pullout rebels has exposed the authorities’ lack of readiness to cope with disengagement, said the liberal Haaretz newspaper.
“This prologue has already proven that this summer is going to be hard as hell, that Israel is in no way ready for the challenge of disengagement.” Bringing forward the pullout would also create problems in terms of where to house the 8,000 settlers to be uprooted from Gaza because construction of temporary housing in Nitzanim, southern Israel, is still very much work in process.
