NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip, 18 August 2005 — Israeli troops yesterday dragged away sobbing and screaming Jewish settlers, some of them ripping their shirts in mourning, from homes and synagogues, marking the beginning of the end of Israel’s 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip.
In the West Bank, a Jewish settler killed four Palestinian laborers in a shooting rampage that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denounced as a twisted act of “Jewish terror” designed to stop the historic pullout.
Soldiers and settlers clashed, argued and hugged — reflecting intense and mixed emotions at the uprooting of settlers whose government had encouraged them years ago to move to Gaza for the sake of Israel’s security.
Sharon said “it’s impossible to watch this ... without tears in the eyes,” but that the pullout would make Israel safer.
Palestinians said they would refrain from retaliating for the West Bank shooting, but 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.
Yesterday was the first day of forcible evacuations from Gaza, following a two-day grace period during which settlers were given a chance to leave voluntarily without losing any of their government compensation. The day was filled with ironic twists and heart wrenching scenes as settlers were carried away by their limbs from homes, synagogues, and even nursery schools.
Soldiers joined anti-withdrawal protesters in prayer before evicting them. An elderly rabbi hugged a Torah scroll as he was escorted out of a synagogue. 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 their babies, soldiers carried toddlers, settlers ripped their clothes in mourning and troops loaded diapers and toys onto buses for evacuation.
A female 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 the troops entered in the morning had been cleared, with resisters remaining only in Neve Dekalim, which has been the main center of resistance for months. Morag, Bedolah, Ganei Tal, Tel Katifa and Kerem Atzmona were deserted.
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 the country’s boundaries.
Palestinians are portraying the pullout as a victory for their bombings and rocket attacks, and some fear they will resume their violence once Israel’s Gaza withdrawal is complete.
Israelis and Palestinians are cooperating to prevent militant violence during the pullout, but in recent weeks it’s been Jewish extremists who have caused the most concern.
Yesterday’s attack was the second on Palestinians by Israelis in two weeks. On Aug. 4, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier 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, aimed at stopping the disengagement.”
But Sharon 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 then got out of his car, took the weapon from the security guard at knifepoint and fired from close range on two workers sitting in his car. Weisgan kept shooting and killed a third worker and wounded two others outside the car. One of the injured died later.
Hamas said it wouldn’t immediately retaliate to enable the Gaza pullout to proceed.
“Hamas, as well as all Palestinians, are interested in seeing the Zionist settlers leave our land as soon as possible,” said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. “But if these crimes continue, factions will not stand by silently.”
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 torch a nearby 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.
Despite the sudden escalation of Israeli-Palestinian tension, the eviction of die-hard settlers and nationalist supporters who flooded into Gaza in recent weeks proceeded with anguish, anger and tears — though more swiftly and smoothly than anyone anticipated.
In overwhelming numbers, columns of unarmed soldiers and police marched into the settlements. The settlers, who carry weapons as a matter of routine, displayed none when the troops arrived.
In Neve Dekalim, troops wearing flak jackets joined about 150 students holding a prayer session at a religious seminary. The soldiers embraced the students before escorting them onto buses.
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, one 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.
Another man who had been forced onto a bus held his infant nephew out of the window, shouting to the soldiers, “You want him?”
