NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip, 15 August 2005 — Israel’s Gaza pullout got under way yesterday, after months of political wrangling and mass protests, and the army chief made a final appeal to troops to show utmost restraint in removing thousands of Jewish settlers from their homes over the next three weeks.
At midnight yesterday, with a gate swinging shut at a Gaza border crossing, it became illegal for Israeli citizens to live in the coastal strip, ushering in the historic withdrawal that marked the first time Israel gave up settled land claimed by the Palestinians for their future state.
Thousands of Palestinian police, meanwhile, moved into positions near Jewish settlements, to keep away Palestinian crowds and prevent attacks by militants during the pullout.
Police planted Palestinian flags and pitched tents at the outposts. Some chanted in praise of their late leader, Yasser Arafat. The Hamas group was organizing special midnight prayers of thanks at Gaza mosques.
Just before the start of the pullout, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas tried to reassure Israelis.
“We tell the Israeli people, ‘you have chosen the right path’,” he said in an interview broadcast on Israel TV’s Channel 10. “This is the right path. Don’t listen to the voices of the extremists who want a continuation of the occupation.
“I don’t want and I will not accept any clashes with the (Israeli) army or the settlers,” he said.
At daybreak today, Israeli troops were to fan out across Gaza’s 21 settlements, knock on doors and inform settlers that their presence in Gaza was now illegal. However, settlers still have until midnight tomorrow to leave voluntarily, without suffering a loss in government compensation.
“It is OK to cry with them (settlers),” the army chief, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, told commanders. During the two-day grace period, “we are there to take it and not to dish it out,” he said. However, once the forcible removal begins on Wednesday morning, soldiers will act with determination, he said.
As part of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal plan, known as “disengagement,” Israel will also evacuate four settlements in the northern West Bank housing some 500 people.
Many hope the disengagement will be the start of a true partition of historic Palestine between Arabs and Jews, though others fear it’s just a ploy by Sharon to get rid of parts of Israel he doesn’t need while consolidating Israel’s control of the parts he cherishes.
Settlers planned to seal off their communities today by gathering at entrances and blocking roads to prevent soldiers from delivering eviction notices.
Hundreds of settler families have already packed their belongings in recent days, and more were leaving yesterday, while hundreds more pledged to ignore the deadline and stay in their homes. They were reinforced by hard-line activists from outside Gaza, and Halutz estimated yesterday that about 5,000 outsiders have managed to sneak into Gaza in recent weeks, despite army restrictions.
In the Peat Sadeh settlement, resident Yaakov Mazaltareen set fire to his two warehouses that contained irrigation equipment and two vehicles. He then drove his forklift into the warehouses, knocking them down. Settlers stopped to watch. One crying woman rushed her children away.
Most residents of Peat Sadeh — which has a reputation of being relatively moderate — have already moved to Israel, and were spending the weekend in a hotel.
Scores of anti-pullout protesters set up tents in the beachfront settlement outpost of Shirat Hayam. They set up a storeroom in a dilapidated beach house, piling up diapers, bottled water and canned foods. Women cooked on open fires, children bathed in makeshift bathrooms and people chatted in open tents.
At a synagogue in Neve Dekalim, Gaza’s largest settlement, seven people sat in the sanctuary and quietly prayed. Itai Ben Simchon, 17, came to the synagogue to collect his father’s prayer shawl and said his family has decided to leave on their own so as not to lose out on compensation money. “My mother and father are crying a lot,” he said.
