For long-time Jewish and Arab friends, disengagement is a double edge sword
By Rafael D. Frankel
PEAT SADEH, Gaza—On the bottom floor of a house that no longer exists, two Palestinians and one Israeli shared a meal two weeks ago that they hope will not be their last together.
Ya’akov Abrigil, Tasir Abu Shaluf, and Sabri Sadudi swapped stories, hugs, shed a few tears, and said they would see each other soon, even though that is far from certain. Their friendship, which is more than a decade old is now, in the hands of politicians.
Though Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza is being hailed around the world as a courageous step toward peace in this war-torn region, it is also tearing apart relationships between Jews and Arabs here that transcended violence and politics for more than two decades.
Soon after Abrigil, 73, moved to this Jewish town in Gush Katif 18 years ago, he built a series of greenhouses in which he grew cucumbers, tomatoes, and sweet peppers. Throughout the years, Abrigil relied on Palestinian workers to provide most of the labor needed to maintain the greenhouses and grow and harvest the crops.
Over time, the bonds they formed turned into much more than a standard employer-employee relationship.
“They’re our family,” Abrigil said. “Some of them have worked for us since they were teenagers.”
Shaluf and Sadudi both described a relationship with Abrigil in the same terms and took pride in seeing each other’s children and grand children grow up—though because of security restrictions the children themselves never came to know each other.
“Their house was always open and we never had any problems with money,” Shaluf said of Abrigil.
Unlike many of the Jewish towns in Gaza, the residents of Peat Sadeh did not put up a fight against their eviction, nor did they wait for the army to forcibly remove them. In the final days of Peat Sadeh’s existence, only a lack of tumbleweed blowing across the pavement prevented comparisons to an Old West ghost town.
Many of the once luxurious villas were stripped down to the stucco walls. Doors, window glass, floor tiling, cupboards and closets, kitchen appliances, and even the red shingles on many roofs were removed by their former owners who took everything of value with them. On the shells of the homes that remained standing, graffiti in red spray paint told tales of the former village and its occupants.
“Here lived in fun the Amin family,” it was written on one home. “Gush Katif forever!”
In those days, when the end was nigh, the friends said they were dealing with separation anxiety. “For a week I didn’t see him and I was mad,” Shaluf said. “These are our last hours together and we are neighbors.”
In the end, Abrigil did come by, even visiting the house of one of his workers in Mawassi—the neighboring Palestinian town—to visit his sick mother.
From his second-story balcony with a view of sand dunes and palm trees which eventually give way to the grey concrete apartments of Mawassi and then the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean Sea, Abrigil pointed to a series of cream-colored oblong tents pitched amongst the dunes.
Wiping a tear from his eye, he spoke of the greenhouses and the friends he was leaving here. “They are harvesting now, and everything they can pick I’m giving to them,” he said.
Abrigil is also paying his workers three months’ wage—a severance package for a dozen years of work which he said still doesn’t rightfully compensate them.
Unlike the Jews who are vacating Gaza, the hundreds of Palestinian workers they are leaving behind are not receiving any compensation for lost jobs. Though a deal seems to have been struck whereby most of the greenhouses will be saved for the Palestinians to take over, the workers themselves are not optimistic about their prospects for continued meaningful employment.
“We heard maybe someone will buy the greenhouses, but it’s just talk. Arabs always talk but who knows what will happen,” Sadudi said. Along with Shaluf, he has little to no confidence in the Palestinian Authority to manage the greenhouses well “and without corruption.”
What the two really want is to be able to work for Abrigil at his new home in Mavki'im, a town just north of Gaza where the entire 26 families of Peat Sadeh have relocated to together.
So far that has not been possible as Israel is, for the most part, not allowing Palestinian workers out of Gaza until after the disengagement—including the uprooting of the Israeli army—is complete.
Contacted recently, Abrigil said he has not received any word from authorities about when or if Shaluf, Sadudi, and others will be allowed into Israel despite repeated requests. He would keep trying, he said.
“If they let us into Israel it will be fine,” Shaluf said at Peat Sadeh. “But if it’s closed to us, then what will we do?”
©2005 The Media Line
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Last targeted settlements cleared
Last targeted settlements cleared
Israeli forces carry out the entire planned evacuation of all settlers in Gaza and at 4 sites in the West Bank in one week with little violence but no shortage of anguish
By Christine Spolar and Rafael D. Frankel, Chicago Tribune. Christine Spolar reported from Homesh, and Rafael D. Frankel reported from Sanur
Published August 24, 2005
HOMESH, West Bank -- Israeli forces Tuesday overwhelmed the hilltop settlements of Homesh and Sanur with practiced assurance, finishing a pullout of thousands of Jewish settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank in a week's time.
After swiftly completing the evacuation of 25 settlements in Palestinian territories, the army now will focus on ending its presence in Gaza.
Houses left by the settlers will be razed in the next 10 days, army officials said. Graves already are being moved, and religious buildings will be destroyed. The withdrawal will be complete when Israeli troops uproot their barracks and checkpoints to leave the Gaza Strip, probably within weeks, to Palestinian Authority rule.
"It's finished but it's not over," Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the army chief of staff, said Tuesday night as troops still were wrangling with the last civilian in Homesh.
The Israeli government has voiced concerns that Palestinians, eager to claim a victory from the withdrawal, will try to enter the settlement sites during the transition. Israeli soldiers are expected to leave no later than early October.
The pullout from the West Bank was the final planned eviction of Jews from land where the Palestinians want to form a state. Twenty-one settlements in Gaza were emptied beginning Aug. 17. Two other settlements in the West Bank, Kadim and Ganim, already were largely vacated.
In Homesh and Sanur, army officials had feared that some settlers, who believed they were reclaiming biblical land for the Jewish state, would fight violently to remain.
Instead, the West Bank settlements, largely religious and right-wing, fell quickly, and soldiers saw no new wrinkles to the pattern of resistance. Army officials said Tuesday night that homes there also will be razed.
`Not volunteering'
Yedidya Lerner, a Homesh settlement spokesman, said Tuesday that the settlers never were armed for the withdrawal and none planned a radical protest. He resented reports that the government considered Homesh an armed threat. The army had negotiated throughout the day with rabbis.
"We're not volunteering to leave the Holy Land," Lerner said. "We won't be embracing these soldiers. We were sorry to see that it was very easy for them in [Gaza]."
Settlers wailed, climbed onto roofs, sprayed troops with water and flour and locked themselves into synagogues to evade eviction. Soldiers used bulldozers in Homesh and cranes in Sanur to break through to the most troublesome settlers. In both communities, troops gave the settlers time to shout themselves into a weakened, though hysterical, state.
In Homesh the army evacuated 709 civilians; one civilian and five police and soldiers were slightly hurt in the confrontations. In Sanur, 620 people were evacuated; one civilian and four police and soldiers were slightly wounded, army officials said.
In the past few days, authorities added, both communities were largely filled with infiltrators protesting the pullout.
In Homesh, infiltrators took control of houses already vacated. Dozens of men and boys locked themselves into the community's synagogue and yeshiva. At one point, 80 girls took over the second floor of a house and sang and danced as soldiers waited outside.
When young women soldiers were sent in, the resisters kicked and screamed for hours. Other girls hurled bags of oil, vinegar and eggs
The synagogue was breached later by troops who first took over the roof and then drilled open the front door.
In Sanur, two dozen girls barricaded themselves inside the courtyard of an art gallery. At an old British police building, 80 resisters sought refuge on the rooftop and dozens more locked themselves inside the building. Security forces used cranes to lift and evacuate them.
In both communities, residents hurled insults at the soldiers as they walked into town.
In Homesh, Mihael Manasherov seethed over how the Israeli army was, as he said, "being used" in an unjust cause.
`Army for Palestine'
"They look like an army for Palestine, not the Israeli army," said Manasherov, an emigre from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, who has lived 14 years in the settlement.
Manasherov, a grandfather of 10, could not hold back his ire as troops walked past the door of his two-bedroom house where a large Israeli flag fluttered. Nothing inside his home was boxed or packed, but the 66-year-old wanted to spend his last few moments in Homesh with soldiers.
"Go on, army of Palestine," he said in a calm, quiet voice to some startled troops. "You're robots."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Israeli forces carry out the entire planned evacuation of all settlers in Gaza and at 4 sites in the West Bank in one week with little violence but no shortage of anguish
By Christine Spolar and Rafael D. Frankel, Chicago Tribune. Christine Spolar reported from Homesh, and Rafael D. Frankel reported from Sanur
Published August 24, 2005
HOMESH, West Bank -- Israeli forces Tuesday overwhelmed the hilltop settlements of Homesh and Sanur with practiced assurance, finishing a pullout of thousands of Jewish settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank in a week's time.
After swiftly completing the evacuation of 25 settlements in Palestinian territories, the army now will focus on ending its presence in Gaza.
Houses left by the settlers will be razed in the next 10 days, army officials said. Graves already are being moved, and religious buildings will be destroyed. The withdrawal will be complete when Israeli troops uproot their barracks and checkpoints to leave the Gaza Strip, probably within weeks, to Palestinian Authority rule.
"It's finished but it's not over," Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the army chief of staff, said Tuesday night as troops still were wrangling with the last civilian in Homesh.
The Israeli government has voiced concerns that Palestinians, eager to claim a victory from the withdrawal, will try to enter the settlement sites during the transition. Israeli soldiers are expected to leave no later than early October.
The pullout from the West Bank was the final planned eviction of Jews from land where the Palestinians want to form a state. Twenty-one settlements in Gaza were emptied beginning Aug. 17. Two other settlements in the West Bank, Kadim and Ganim, already were largely vacated.
In Homesh and Sanur, army officials had feared that some settlers, who believed they were reclaiming biblical land for the Jewish state, would fight violently to remain.
Instead, the West Bank settlements, largely religious and right-wing, fell quickly, and soldiers saw no new wrinkles to the pattern of resistance. Army officials said Tuesday night that homes there also will be razed.
`Not volunteering'
Yedidya Lerner, a Homesh settlement spokesman, said Tuesday that the settlers never were armed for the withdrawal and none planned a radical protest. He resented reports that the government considered Homesh an armed threat. The army had negotiated throughout the day with rabbis.
"We're not volunteering to leave the Holy Land," Lerner said. "We won't be embracing these soldiers. We were sorry to see that it was very easy for them in [Gaza]."
Settlers wailed, climbed onto roofs, sprayed troops with water and flour and locked themselves into synagogues to evade eviction. Soldiers used bulldozers in Homesh and cranes in Sanur to break through to the most troublesome settlers. In both communities, troops gave the settlers time to shout themselves into a weakened, though hysterical, state.
In Homesh the army evacuated 709 civilians; one civilian and five police and soldiers were slightly hurt in the confrontations. In Sanur, 620 people were evacuated; one civilian and four police and soldiers were slightly wounded, army officials said.
In the past few days, authorities added, both communities were largely filled with infiltrators protesting the pullout.
In Homesh, infiltrators took control of houses already vacated. Dozens of men and boys locked themselves into the community's synagogue and yeshiva. At one point, 80 girls took over the second floor of a house and sang and danced as soldiers waited outside.
When young women soldiers were sent in, the resisters kicked and screamed for hours. Other girls hurled bags of oil, vinegar and eggs
The synagogue was breached later by troops who first took over the roof and then drilled open the front door.
In Sanur, two dozen girls barricaded themselves inside the courtyard of an art gallery. At an old British police building, 80 resisters sought refuge on the rooftop and dozens more locked themselves inside the building. Security forces used cranes to lift and evacuate them.
In both communities, residents hurled insults at the soldiers as they walked into town.
In Homesh, Mihael Manasherov seethed over how the Israeli army was, as he said, "being used" in an unjust cause.
`Army for Palestine'
"They look like an army for Palestine, not the Israeli army," said Manasherov, an emigre from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, who has lived 14 years in the settlement.
Manasherov, a grandfather of 10, could not hold back his ire as troops walked past the door of his two-bedroom house where a large Israeli flag fluttered. Nothing inside his home was boxed or packed, but the 66-year-old wanted to spend his last few moments in Homesh with soldiers.
"Go on, army of Palestine," he said in a calm, quiet voice to some startled troops. "You're robots."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Last settlements evacuated as resistance folds without major incident
Last settlements evacuated as resistance folds without major incident
By Rafael D. Frankel
SA-NUR, West Bank—On the roof of the three-story art gallery here, where six Palestinian towns and a series of mountains make-up the 360-degree panorama, barrels of canned food, stacks of bottled water, and enough mattresses to accommodate dozens of people were piled amongst gas masks, megaphones, and ladders.
They were supplies for a long-awaited battle that never happened.
The last pocket of resistance to Israel’s disengagement plan fell with a whimper here Tuesday despite long hyped fears that this hill-top enclave of religious Zionists might put up a real fire fight against the Israeli Defense Forces which came to remove them.
The settlers of Sa-Nur proved good to their word of non-violent resistance. No shots were fired, no acid was thrown on police, and though nearly all of the residents and protesters who were removed today had to be carried out, most did not struggle against it when the time came.
Still, officers from Israel’s SWAT team, the Yassam, were forced for the second time in a week to storm a roof top in two modified cargo crates lifted by separate cranes. Though it took them more than 20 minutes to gain the roof in the Gazan town Kfar Darom, the Yassam did it here in less than one.
As the crates were heaved into position, Yassam officers inside them sprayed fire extinguishers at protesters on the roof wearing gas masks and brandishing long wooden beams in an effort to prevent the crates from landing. Simultaneously, three officers perched in a fire ladder used a high pressure hose to move the protesters back, and the combination of the two allowed the crates to land.
Once the Yassam were on the roof, the resistance ended and the protesters began praying the traditional afternoon Jewish service.
“It seems we couldn’t prevent [the evacuation] from being performed,” said right-wing Knesset Member Arieh Eldad who moved to San-Ur nine months ago. But “we will return and rebuild every settlement that was destroyed.”
After the service, the protesters fell to the ground, laying on top of each other and locking their limbs together. As the Yassam struggled to untangle one from the other and carried them to the crates, they sang “The Nation of Israel is one” and “The eternal people are not afraid of the long path.”
Despite the cage landings, the most difficult army operation came in the middle of the day when female soldiers were charged with removing around two dozen women from the court yard of the art gallery. Many of them had children and refused to hand them off to the female officers while they were being carried away.
One boy around a year old started crying when soldiers moved to carry him and his mother away together. The woman kept her eyes on her boy the whole time, refusing to speak to, or even acknowledge the soldiers. “Don’t look at them, look at mom,” she smiled at her son as the soldiers moved in and hoisted them away.
Earlier in the day, Israeli soldiers cleared out the main synagogue where around 30 men and teenagers had dug an eight-foot trench around the side of the building, strung razor wire around the side walls and welded metal bars across the doorway and windows.
With sparks flying, army engineers cut through the bars at the doorway using two large circular saws. Soldiers then allowed the protesters to finish their prayers before carrying them out. They were also sitting on the floor, limbs locked together and singing, when the soldiers came for them.
The day began in earnest at 5:30am when long columns of busses streamed down the road from the north carrying around 10,000 soldiers. Though youths lit tire fires and scattered the road to Sa-Nur with tables, chairs, mattresses, and metal spikes, it was easily cleared out by an army bulldozer which first uprooted the settlement’s locked entrance gate in a matter of seconds.
After police moved in to secure the town, soldiers quickly broke down dozens of unoccupied tents (the people had locked themselves in other buildings) which were home to hundreds of visitors who came to support the residents here who chose to stay. At the same time, protesters on the roof sang a traditional Jewish prayer which beings: “How beautiful are your tents, oh Jacob.”
Soldiers then moved methodically from house to house, forcibly removing families, some of whom were wearing six-pointed orange stars on their shirts.
One family had “barricaded” their house with a tricycle, a toy car, and kid-size chairs. Upon leaving the home, a girl around five years old jumped down their one stair with a bag of graham crackers in her hand and a wide smile.
At a quarter after seven, an announcement came over the town’s loud speakers for everyone who wanted to, to come into the art gallery together before the doors were welded shut. Along the roof, settlers had strung up a large sign which read: “Damned is he who expels his brother from his home.”
But after using circular saws to cut through the art gallery doors, soldiers and police met minimal resistance in clearing out the town’s largest building.
“I think [the prospect of] violence was very much a media created notion,” said IDF Spokesman Marcus Sheff. “Our working assumption was that people would resist but wouldn’t cross any red lines.”
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel
By Rafael D. Frankel
SA-NUR, West Bank—On the roof of the three-story art gallery here, where six Palestinian towns and a series of mountains make-up the 360-degree panorama, barrels of canned food, stacks of bottled water, and enough mattresses to accommodate dozens of people were piled amongst gas masks, megaphones, and ladders.
They were supplies for a long-awaited battle that never happened.
The last pocket of resistance to Israel’s disengagement plan fell with a whimper here Tuesday despite long hyped fears that this hill-top enclave of religious Zionists might put up a real fire fight against the Israeli Defense Forces which came to remove them.
The settlers of Sa-Nur proved good to their word of non-violent resistance. No shots were fired, no acid was thrown on police, and though nearly all of the residents and protesters who were removed today had to be carried out, most did not struggle against it when the time came.
Still, officers from Israel’s SWAT team, the Yassam, were forced for the second time in a week to storm a roof top in two modified cargo crates lifted by separate cranes. Though it took them more than 20 minutes to gain the roof in the Gazan town Kfar Darom, the Yassam did it here in less than one.
As the crates were heaved into position, Yassam officers inside them sprayed fire extinguishers at protesters on the roof wearing gas masks and brandishing long wooden beams in an effort to prevent the crates from landing. Simultaneously, three officers perched in a fire ladder used a high pressure hose to move the protesters back, and the combination of the two allowed the crates to land.
Once the Yassam were on the roof, the resistance ended and the protesters began praying the traditional afternoon Jewish service.
“It seems we couldn’t prevent [the evacuation] from being performed,” said right-wing Knesset Member Arieh Eldad who moved to San-Ur nine months ago. But “we will return and rebuild every settlement that was destroyed.”
After the service, the protesters fell to the ground, laying on top of each other and locking their limbs together. As the Yassam struggled to untangle one from the other and carried them to the crates, they sang “The Nation of Israel is one” and “The eternal people are not afraid of the long path.”
Despite the cage landings, the most difficult army operation came in the middle of the day when female soldiers were charged with removing around two dozen women from the court yard of the art gallery. Many of them had children and refused to hand them off to the female officers while they were being carried away.
One boy around a year old started crying when soldiers moved to carry him and his mother away together. The woman kept her eyes on her boy the whole time, refusing to speak to, or even acknowledge the soldiers. “Don’t look at them, look at mom,” she smiled at her son as the soldiers moved in and hoisted them away.
Earlier in the day, Israeli soldiers cleared out the main synagogue where around 30 men and teenagers had dug an eight-foot trench around the side of the building, strung razor wire around the side walls and welded metal bars across the doorway and windows.
With sparks flying, army engineers cut through the bars at the doorway using two large circular saws. Soldiers then allowed the protesters to finish their prayers before carrying them out. They were also sitting on the floor, limbs locked together and singing, when the soldiers came for them.
The day began in earnest at 5:30am when long columns of busses streamed down the road from the north carrying around 10,000 soldiers. Though youths lit tire fires and scattered the road to Sa-Nur with tables, chairs, mattresses, and metal spikes, it was easily cleared out by an army bulldozer which first uprooted the settlement’s locked entrance gate in a matter of seconds.
After police moved in to secure the town, soldiers quickly broke down dozens of unoccupied tents (the people had locked themselves in other buildings) which were home to hundreds of visitors who came to support the residents here who chose to stay. At the same time, protesters on the roof sang a traditional Jewish prayer which beings: “How beautiful are your tents, oh Jacob.”
Soldiers then moved methodically from house to house, forcibly removing families, some of whom were wearing six-pointed orange stars on their shirts.
One family had “barricaded” their house with a tricycle, a toy car, and kid-size chairs. Upon leaving the home, a girl around five years old jumped down their one stair with a bag of graham crackers in her hand and a wide smile.
At a quarter after seven, an announcement came over the town’s loud speakers for everyone who wanted to, to come into the art gallery together before the doors were welded shut. Along the roof, settlers had strung up a large sign which read: “Damned is he who expels his brother from his home.”
But after using circular saws to cut through the art gallery doors, soldiers and police met minimal resistance in clearing out the town’s largest building.
“I think [the prospect of] violence was very much a media created notion,” said IDF Spokesman Marcus Sheff. “Our working assumption was that people would resist but wouldn’t cross any red lines.”
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel
Monday, August 22, 2005
In West Bank, a 'Masada mind-set'
In West Bank, a 'Masada mind-set'
Israeli troops worry about armed extremists in the last two settlements.
By Rafael D. Frankel and Ilene R. Prusher
HOMESH, WEST BANK – When more than 5,000 Israeli troops arrive here and in nearby Sa-Nur Tuesday, they anticipate a more violent opposition to evacuation than in Gaza, including the possibility of being fired on by young extremists.
From Gaza's seaside settlements - the last of them evacuated Monday - to the hills of northern West Bank, more changes than topography. There is a clear difference in the types of protesters drawn to the two final enclaves to be evacuated in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan.
There are Israeli extremists who say that they haven't made a strong enough statement yet about the morality of uprooting settlements, and some are driven by a "Masada mentality" - the desire to do something so extreme as to make that message unforgettable.
In AD 74, 1,000 Jewish zealots held off the Roman army in a mountaintop siege, before committing suicide.
"I lost faith. I don't believe in the government, the laws, the police, the army," says Eitan Felsenstein, who is from another West Bank settlement. He doesn't directly threaten violence, but says that they are planning "something serious."
Just how serious has become a major concern. According to various reports, some infiltrators holed up in the two settlements, which have far more agitators than original residents, are arming themselves with weapons.
Officials are hopeful that many will only want to put up a tough fight but most won't turn to bloodshed. "We prepare for the worst and hope for the best," says Superintendent Sharon Brown of the Israel Police, "but we are definitely preparing for the worst."
Physically, the mountainous settlements are harder for the army to close off. But ideologically, for settlers who only refer to this region by its biblical name, Samaria, this land is on an even higher ground. Jewish tradition holds that the patriarch Joseph is buried in nearby Nablus, and over the past three decades, some of the most ultranationalist settlers have been drawn to this area.
Since the late 1990s, the Israeli government has attempted to rein in vigilante settlements. In these, a group of young settlers would find an uninhabited peak, plant a flag and a few mobile homes on it, and declare it a new community. The activists were dubbed the "hilltop youth."
In the years since, some of the hilltop youth have become further radicalized. They tend to be second- and third-generation settlers, most of them children of the Gush Emunim, Hebrew for "Bloc of the Faithful," founded in the early 1970s. Although this religious-national group was viewed as radical in its day, with leaders pushing to strike roots all over the West Bank and Gaza, it maintained a close relationship with state institutions.
By comparison, says Prof. Ami Pedahzur, an expert on Israel's far right and a political scientist at the University of Haifa, many in the next generation are not serving in the army - either by religious exemptions or because some of them have profiles with Israel's security forces that kept them out.
As a result, many of the hilltop youth have eschewed their parent's patriotism. Their beliefs hold that every settlement sits on sacred ground, leaving no room for compromise.
"They wear biblical clothes, and there's some element of new age behavior there. You can see them walking with sheep and goats. They try to be close to nature," as if living in the ways of their forefathers, Mr. Pedahzur says, "but actually they're very extreme."
Most of these groups, says Pedahzur, have no centralized leadership structure. As such, fears of what could transpire here stem from the fact that even if more mature voices - such that of Aryeh Eldad, a far right-wing parliament member who is also camped out here - send out a message encouraging nonviolence, it might easily be ignored.
"We know that some of the boys up in the hills there are not following orders of the mainstream leadership," says Pedahzur, "and there are small cells of people that can try to push for a more militant attitude."
Still, he estimates, there is no widespread desire for another Massada. Pedahzur says it's likely that the swift evacuation of Gaza will weaken the resolve of some of the holdouts here, causing a "domino effect" that will let any rational person know that Israel's armed forces are more than capable of overcoming the holdouts. They number around 2,000, according to Maariv newspaper.
©2005 The Chrisitian Science Monitor
Israeli troops worry about armed extremists in the last two settlements.
By Rafael D. Frankel and Ilene R. Prusher
HOMESH, WEST BANK – When more than 5,000 Israeli troops arrive here and in nearby Sa-Nur Tuesday, they anticipate a more violent opposition to evacuation than in Gaza, including the possibility of being fired on by young extremists.
From Gaza's seaside settlements - the last of them evacuated Monday - to the hills of northern West Bank, more changes than topography. There is a clear difference in the types of protesters drawn to the two final enclaves to be evacuated in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan.
There are Israeli extremists who say that they haven't made a strong enough statement yet about the morality of uprooting settlements, and some are driven by a "Masada mentality" - the desire to do something so extreme as to make that message unforgettable.
In AD 74, 1,000 Jewish zealots held off the Roman army in a mountaintop siege, before committing suicide.
"I lost faith. I don't believe in the government, the laws, the police, the army," says Eitan Felsenstein, who is from another West Bank settlement. He doesn't directly threaten violence, but says that they are planning "something serious."
Just how serious has become a major concern. According to various reports, some infiltrators holed up in the two settlements, which have far more agitators than original residents, are arming themselves with weapons.
Officials are hopeful that many will only want to put up a tough fight but most won't turn to bloodshed. "We prepare for the worst and hope for the best," says Superintendent Sharon Brown of the Israel Police, "but we are definitely preparing for the worst."
Physically, the mountainous settlements are harder for the army to close off. But ideologically, for settlers who only refer to this region by its biblical name, Samaria, this land is on an even higher ground. Jewish tradition holds that the patriarch Joseph is buried in nearby Nablus, and over the past three decades, some of the most ultranationalist settlers have been drawn to this area.
Since the late 1990s, the Israeli government has attempted to rein in vigilante settlements. In these, a group of young settlers would find an uninhabited peak, plant a flag and a few mobile homes on it, and declare it a new community. The activists were dubbed the "hilltop youth."
In the years since, some of the hilltop youth have become further radicalized. They tend to be second- and third-generation settlers, most of them children of the Gush Emunim, Hebrew for "Bloc of the Faithful," founded in the early 1970s. Although this religious-national group was viewed as radical in its day, with leaders pushing to strike roots all over the West Bank and Gaza, it maintained a close relationship with state institutions.
By comparison, says Prof. Ami Pedahzur, an expert on Israel's far right and a political scientist at the University of Haifa, many in the next generation are not serving in the army - either by religious exemptions or because some of them have profiles with Israel's security forces that kept them out.
As a result, many of the hilltop youth have eschewed their parent's patriotism. Their beliefs hold that every settlement sits on sacred ground, leaving no room for compromise.
"They wear biblical clothes, and there's some element of new age behavior there. You can see them walking with sheep and goats. They try to be close to nature," as if living in the ways of their forefathers, Mr. Pedahzur says, "but actually they're very extreme."
Most of these groups, says Pedahzur, have no centralized leadership structure. As such, fears of what could transpire here stem from the fact that even if more mature voices - such that of Aryeh Eldad, a far right-wing parliament member who is also camped out here - send out a message encouraging nonviolence, it might easily be ignored.
"We know that some of the boys up in the hills there are not following orders of the mainstream leadership," says Pedahzur, "and there are small cells of people that can try to push for a more militant attitude."
Still, he estimates, there is no widespread desire for another Massada. Pedahzur says it's likely that the swift evacuation of Gaza will weaken the resolve of some of the holdouts here, causing a "domino effect" that will let any rational person know that Israel's armed forces are more than capable of overcoming the holdouts. They number around 2,000, according to Maariv newspaper.
©2005 The Chrisitian Science Monitor
Troops face harder test in West Bank
Troops face harder test in West Bank
By Rafael D. Frankel, Special to the Tribune. Tribune foreign correspondent Christine Spolar contributed to this report from Jerusalem
Published August 22, 2005
SA-NUR, West Bank -- At the entrance to this town of 105 official residents and hundreds or thousands of protesters, a sign on the gate is posted: "No entrance allowed to the forces of expulsion." But it is not just them.
Visitors, journalists included, who have recently approached the entrance gate, which is locked with a thick iron chain, have been hastily chased away by residents and sometimes threatened with beatings if they don't immediately comply.
With the evacuation of Gaza nearly finished, the Israeli army is shifting to what is expected to be the most difficult part of the disengagement--four settlements in the West Bank, where isolation is not just a state of geography, but a state of mind.
The government "thinks we're the enemy," said Einat, 26, a Sa-Nur resident who refused to give her last name. "They don't understand that the Arabs are our enemy," she said, holding her 3-year-old boy and standing before a line of border patrol officers she confronted in the fields.
Though residents interviewed outside the walls of the settlement say they will not use violence, where they are drawing the line is unknown.
On Sunday, a teenager injured his shoulder when he was tackled along the road to Sa-Nur by four soldiers after he threw a punch at one of them. Other punches were thrown and two soldiers and two protesters wrestled each other to the ground.
The army has for some time been concerned about the possible threat Sa-Nur poses, especially if armed residents fire their weapons, Israeli Defense Forces spokeswoman Sharon Feingold said.
Meanwhile in neighboring Chomesh, another settlement scheduled for evacuation, youths from across Israel were busy ringing the roof of the Yeshiva with two rows of barbed wire. They also brought up jerry cans of water and wooden beams for fending off anyone who tried to scale the Yeshiva wall.
The Chomesh youths also vowed not to use violence, but they said they did not want to go quietly.
"If we sat inside and studied, [the army] would have us out in half an hour," said Eitan Felsenstein, 19, an Israeli from another West Bank settlement whose parents are from West Rogers Park. "We're doing something serious here."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
By Rafael D. Frankel, Special to the Tribune. Tribune foreign correspondent Christine Spolar contributed to this report from Jerusalem
Published August 22, 2005
SA-NUR, West Bank -- At the entrance to this town of 105 official residents and hundreds or thousands of protesters, a sign on the gate is posted: "No entrance allowed to the forces of expulsion." But it is not just them.
Visitors, journalists included, who have recently approached the entrance gate, which is locked with a thick iron chain, have been hastily chased away by residents and sometimes threatened with beatings if they don't immediately comply.
With the evacuation of Gaza nearly finished, the Israeli army is shifting to what is expected to be the most difficult part of the disengagement--four settlements in the West Bank, where isolation is not just a state of geography, but a state of mind.
The government "thinks we're the enemy," said Einat, 26, a Sa-Nur resident who refused to give her last name. "They don't understand that the Arabs are our enemy," she said, holding her 3-year-old boy and standing before a line of border patrol officers she confronted in the fields.
Though residents interviewed outside the walls of the settlement say they will not use violence, where they are drawing the line is unknown.
On Sunday, a teenager injured his shoulder when he was tackled along the road to Sa-Nur by four soldiers after he threw a punch at one of them. Other punches were thrown and two soldiers and two protesters wrestled each other to the ground.
The army has for some time been concerned about the possible threat Sa-Nur poses, especially if armed residents fire their weapons, Israeli Defense Forces spokeswoman Sharon Feingold said.
Meanwhile in neighboring Chomesh, another settlement scheduled for evacuation, youths from across Israel were busy ringing the roof of the Yeshiva with two rows of barbed wire. They also brought up jerry cans of water and wooden beams for fending off anyone who tried to scale the Yeshiva wall.
The Chomesh youths also vowed not to use violence, but they said they did not want to go quietly.
"If we sat inside and studied, [the army] would have us out in half an hour," said Eitan Felsenstein, 19, an Israeli from another West Bank settlement whose parents are from West Rogers Park. "We're doing something serious here."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Saturday, August 20, 2005
In Gaza, Israelis begin demolition
In Gaza, Israelis begin demolition
By Rafael D. Frankel and Joel Greenberg, Chicago Tribune. Tribune foreign correspondent Joel Greenberg reported from Kerem Atzmona, and Rafael Frankel reported from Gadid
Published August 20, 2005
GADID, Gaza Strip -- The Israel army moved cranes and bulldozers Friday into some empty settlements in Gaza to tear apart the homes of Jewish settlers forced out earlier in the week. Extensive demolitions are expected within days.
Cranes were pulled into Kerem Atzmona on Friday afternoon, and there were reports that about 20 homes were flattened there. Several bulldozers were observed Friday at the settlement of Peat Sadeh on the third full day of the historic pullout of Israelis from Gaza.
Soldiers are expected to evacuate the final four settlements--out of a total of 21 that once existed in Gaza--by Tuesday.
Much of the operation Friday focused on evacuating protesters from the settlement of Gadid. About 60 people in a synagogue tried to resist, and soldiers eventually entered the settlement by bulldozer, pushing aside burning debris. The standoff was smaller than the hours-long tumult that soldiers confronted a day earlier in two hard-line communities, Neve Dekalim and Kfar Darom.
The Gaza operation was halted for the weekend when the last protester left Gadid in order to allow observance of the Jewish Sabbath.
Later Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told cheering crowds in Gaza that promised construction on the former settler tracts--this time to provide Palestinians homes--would commence as soon the Israeli army finished its planned mission in Gaza and the West Bank.
Abbas, speaking in the southern town of Rafah, pledged to rebuild homes demolished in battles during the past five years. He said the Israeli pullout in Gaza came as a result of Palestinian "sacrifices" and "patience" and he promised further Israeli pullouts from the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The operation at Gadid, studded with emotional outcries by the settlers, moved speedily. No soldiers were reported injured. A civilian who threw oil at troops while standing on the roof of the synagogue slipped and fell, suffering moderate injuries, the army said. A total of 300 civilians left Gadid on Friday, the army said.
A day earlier, soldiers in the larger settlements had been doused with acid by some protesters. Police said 244 protesters were arrested as a result of the clashes Thursday.
On Friday, there was a rare element of Palestinian interference, as two Hamas militants were wounded when an explosive device they were carrying accidentally blew up before they could plant it near the evacuated Kfar Darom settlement, The Associated Press reported.
The extent of their injuries was unknown, according to Palestinian security officials, who could not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The militants apparently wanted to target Israeli troops still guarding the emptied settlement to bolster Hamas claims of having driven the Israelis from Gaza.
At Gadid, the protest ended when soldiers and settlers agreed to hold morning prayers in the synagogue. Men in the main hall wept and prayed, and a small group of women in the balcony overhead sang psalms. Afterward, the last resident prayed with police and soldiers before removing three torah scrolls from the arch.
In a poignant moment, under the shade of a small tree, Itzik Yuli, a soldier from Gadid who was not asked to serve in the evacuation, read aloud a letter to Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, head of the army's southern command.
As Harel listened, with his arm around the youth, Yuli sobbed that his heart was breaking but he would continue to "wear the uniform." Harel responded: "You've honored the memory of this place."
At one point, gunshots were heard from the Palestinian city of Khan Yunis, apparently directed at three Israeli settler youths who had climbed to the top of the community center in Gadid. The shooting ceased after the army persuaded the boys to come down from the roof.
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
By Rafael D. Frankel and Joel Greenberg, Chicago Tribune. Tribune foreign correspondent Joel Greenberg reported from Kerem Atzmona, and Rafael Frankel reported from Gadid
Published August 20, 2005
GADID, Gaza Strip -- The Israel army moved cranes and bulldozers Friday into some empty settlements in Gaza to tear apart the homes of Jewish settlers forced out earlier in the week. Extensive demolitions are expected within days.
Cranes were pulled into Kerem Atzmona on Friday afternoon, and there were reports that about 20 homes were flattened there. Several bulldozers were observed Friday at the settlement of Peat Sadeh on the third full day of the historic pullout of Israelis from Gaza.
Soldiers are expected to evacuate the final four settlements--out of a total of 21 that once existed in Gaza--by Tuesday.
Much of the operation Friday focused on evacuating protesters from the settlement of Gadid. About 60 people in a synagogue tried to resist, and soldiers eventually entered the settlement by bulldozer, pushing aside burning debris. The standoff was smaller than the hours-long tumult that soldiers confronted a day earlier in two hard-line communities, Neve Dekalim and Kfar Darom.
The Gaza operation was halted for the weekend when the last protester left Gadid in order to allow observance of the Jewish Sabbath.
Later Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told cheering crowds in Gaza that promised construction on the former settler tracts--this time to provide Palestinians homes--would commence as soon the Israeli army finished its planned mission in Gaza and the West Bank.
Abbas, speaking in the southern town of Rafah, pledged to rebuild homes demolished in battles during the past five years. He said the Israeli pullout in Gaza came as a result of Palestinian "sacrifices" and "patience" and he promised further Israeli pullouts from the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The operation at Gadid, studded with emotional outcries by the settlers, moved speedily. No soldiers were reported injured. A civilian who threw oil at troops while standing on the roof of the synagogue slipped and fell, suffering moderate injuries, the army said. A total of 300 civilians left Gadid on Friday, the army said.
A day earlier, soldiers in the larger settlements had been doused with acid by some protesters. Police said 244 protesters were arrested as a result of the clashes Thursday.
On Friday, there was a rare element of Palestinian interference, as two Hamas militants were wounded when an explosive device they were carrying accidentally blew up before they could plant it near the evacuated Kfar Darom settlement, The Associated Press reported.
The extent of their injuries was unknown, according to Palestinian security officials, who could not be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The militants apparently wanted to target Israeli troops still guarding the emptied settlement to bolster Hamas claims of having driven the Israelis from Gaza.
At Gadid, the protest ended when soldiers and settlers agreed to hold morning prayers in the synagogue. Men in the main hall wept and prayed, and a small group of women in the balcony overhead sang psalms. Afterward, the last resident prayed with police and soldiers before removing three torah scrolls from the arch.
In a poignant moment, under the shade of a small tree, Itzik Yuli, a soldier from Gadid who was not asked to serve in the evacuation, read aloud a letter to Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, head of the army's southern command.
As Harel listened, with his arm around the youth, Yuli sobbed that his heart was breaking but he would continue to "wear the uniform." Harel responded: "You've honored the memory of this place."
At one point, gunshots were heard from the Palestinian city of Khan Yunis, apparently directed at three Israeli settler youths who had climbed to the top of the community center in Gadid. The shooting ceased after the army persuaded the boys to come down from the roof.
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Friday, August 19, 2005
Troops evict protesters from 2 synagogues
Troops evict protesters from 2 synagogues
Nearly two-thirds of the 21 Gaza Strip settlements have been emptied; protesters in one settlement douse cops with oil and paint
By Joel Greenberg and Rafael D. Frankel. Tribune foreign correspondent Joel Greenberg reported from Neve Dekalim, and Rafael D. Frankel from Kfar Darom
Published August 19, 2005
KFAR DAROM, Gaza Strip -- Pressing ahead with their operation to evacuate all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces swept through synagogues in two settlements Thursday to evict hundreds of resisters to the withdrawal.
The army expanded the evacuation drive to more settlements, and said that about two-thirds of the 21 Gaza settlements were already empty.
In Kfar Darom, police SWAT teams were doused with oil and paint as they stormed the roof of the synagogue to oust protesters who had barricaded themselves in the building.
Residents of Netzer Hazani set fire to homes, garbage and tires as soldiers entered the settlement, The Associated Press reported.
At the main Gaza settlement of Neve Dekalim, troops removed more than 1,000 protesters who had made a last stand at the main synagogue.
The confrontation in Kfar Darom was the most violent since the evacuation operation began Monday. Hundreds of protesters barricaded themselves in the synagogue and on the roof, ringing it with barbed wire.
Police broke down the front door and cleared out protesters inside the building, but their attempts to reach the roof in specially constructed cages lowered by cranes were thwarted by settlers brandishing long poles.
When the SWAT teams attempted to reach the roof with ladders, they were showered with paint, oil, sand and debris. One squad was hit by what appeared to be acid, and its members stripped off their clothes as their comrades doused them with water.
Using a water cannon and foam to disperse the protesters on the roof, the police managed to lower the cages and herd protesters in.
They were then taken down and put on waiting buses.
Earlier, soldiers evacuated settlers from homes in Kfar Darom, carrying many to buses.
At Neve Dekalim, about 500 men and male youths and 700 mostly teenage girls took refuge in separate prayer halls at the central synagogue, singing and praying as hundreds of troops ringed the building.
The girls were evacuated with little resistance, but the men and youths sat on the floor, locked arms and legs and resisted fiercely when soldiers burst in and tried to haul them away.
"A Jew does not expel a Jew!" the crowd chanted as soldiers pried youths from one another and dragged them to buses.
Some worshipers struggled and kicked as they were taken away. "You will not be forgiven," one man told the soldiers who carried him.
Many people wept, tearing their shirts in a Jewish sign of mourning.
After the room was cleared of many of the protesters, some settlers were accompanied by soldiers to the ark holding the Torah scrolls for a last farewell. Supported by the soldiers, they wept. Soldiers also cried, embracing the settlers.
"I'm torn inside, because the synagogue is the holiest place for Jews, and this one is being closed," said Sgt. Maj. Eli Algarisi, 29, who took part in the eviction. "I hope we all come together, so we never have to evacuate anyone again."
The pain was also felt Thursday by Sarit Sabbagh, a policewoman who supervised the evacuation of the Wexler family from their Neve Dekalim home.
Tehila Wexler, 15, had to be carried out of her room, and outside the house she broke off a tree branch and pulled up a handful of grass to take with her.
"This is so cruel," Tehila said, sobbing. "Don't you understand, I don't want to leave, this is my home. You are destroying our life."
Sabbagh wiped away tears.
After Tehila was put on a bus with her family, Sabbagh was confronted by a neighbor.
"You just took a family out of its home," the neighbor said. "How could you do it?"
"I did it because it was the decision of a democratically elected government," Sabbagh said. "It is sad, and it is painful, but professionally I believe in what I am doing."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Nearly two-thirds of the 21 Gaza Strip settlements have been emptied; protesters in one settlement douse cops with oil and paint
By Joel Greenberg and Rafael D. Frankel. Tribune foreign correspondent Joel Greenberg reported from Neve Dekalim, and Rafael D. Frankel from Kfar Darom
Published August 19, 2005
KFAR DAROM, Gaza Strip -- Pressing ahead with their operation to evacuate all Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces swept through synagogues in two settlements Thursday to evict hundreds of resisters to the withdrawal.
The army expanded the evacuation drive to more settlements, and said that about two-thirds of the 21 Gaza settlements were already empty.
In Kfar Darom, police SWAT teams were doused with oil and paint as they stormed the roof of the synagogue to oust protesters who had barricaded themselves in the building.
Residents of Netzer Hazani set fire to homes, garbage and tires as soldiers entered the settlement, The Associated Press reported.
At the main Gaza settlement of Neve Dekalim, troops removed more than 1,000 protesters who had made a last stand at the main synagogue.
The confrontation in Kfar Darom was the most violent since the evacuation operation began Monday. Hundreds of protesters barricaded themselves in the synagogue and on the roof, ringing it with barbed wire.
Police broke down the front door and cleared out protesters inside the building, but their attempts to reach the roof in specially constructed cages lowered by cranes were thwarted by settlers brandishing long poles.
When the SWAT teams attempted to reach the roof with ladders, they were showered with paint, oil, sand and debris. One squad was hit by what appeared to be acid, and its members stripped off their clothes as their comrades doused them with water.
Using a water cannon and foam to disperse the protesters on the roof, the police managed to lower the cages and herd protesters in.
They were then taken down and put on waiting buses.
Earlier, soldiers evacuated settlers from homes in Kfar Darom, carrying many to buses.
At Neve Dekalim, about 500 men and male youths and 700 mostly teenage girls took refuge in separate prayer halls at the central synagogue, singing and praying as hundreds of troops ringed the building.
The girls were evacuated with little resistance, but the men and youths sat on the floor, locked arms and legs and resisted fiercely when soldiers burst in and tried to haul them away.
"A Jew does not expel a Jew!" the crowd chanted as soldiers pried youths from one another and dragged them to buses.
Some worshipers struggled and kicked as they were taken away. "You will not be forgiven," one man told the soldiers who carried him.
Many people wept, tearing their shirts in a Jewish sign of mourning.
After the room was cleared of many of the protesters, some settlers were accompanied by soldiers to the ark holding the Torah scrolls for a last farewell. Supported by the soldiers, they wept. Soldiers also cried, embracing the settlers.
"I'm torn inside, because the synagogue is the holiest place for Jews, and this one is being closed," said Sgt. Maj. Eli Algarisi, 29, who took part in the eviction. "I hope we all come together, so we never have to evacuate anyone again."
The pain was also felt Thursday by Sarit Sabbagh, a policewoman who supervised the evacuation of the Wexler family from their Neve Dekalim home.
Tehila Wexler, 15, had to be carried out of her room, and outside the house she broke off a tree branch and pulled up a handful of grass to take with her.
"This is so cruel," Tehila said, sobbing. "Don't you understand, I don't want to leave, this is my home. You are destroying our life."
Sabbagh wiped away tears.
After Tehila was put on a bus with her family, Sabbagh was confronted by a neighbor.
"You just took a family out of its home," the neighbor said. "How could you do it?"
"I did it because it was the decision of a democratically elected government," Sabbagh said. "It is sad, and it is painful, but professionally I believe in what I am doing."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Israeli SWAT teams storm synagogue in isolated Jewish settlement
Israeli SWAT teams storm synagogue in isolated Jewish settlement
By Rafael D. Frankel
KFAR DAROM, Gaza—Police SWAT teams were doused with acid and a barrage of paint, sand, oil, garbage, and water melon rinds as they stormed the central Synagogue here Thursday to remove protestors who had barricaded themselves on the roof.
At least five policemen from Israel’s elite Yasaam unit had acid dumped on them as they tried to climb to the roof from a second-story balcony and were led out of the synagogue by fellow police wearing only underwear.
The operation to remove the estimated 1,000 protestors, many of whom had illegally infiltrated Gaza in the last week, lasted more than two-and-a-half hours.
The protestors barricaded the front doors to the synagogue and welded shut the only entrance to the roof. After removing peaceful protestors from the ground floor, two cranes lifted dozens of officers in cages onto the roof.
After earlier attempts to land on the roof were thwarted by protestors brandishing long wooden beams and metal poles, the Yassam reequipped its officers with fire extinguishers which they used in tandem with a mobile water cannon on the street to keep the protestors at bay while they landed on the roof.
Simultaneously, two squads of four officers threw ladders to the roof from the balcony, climbing them together holding shields over their heads.
For more than 15 minutes protestors heaved paint from a blow horn and used sticks to repel the lead officer who cut the barbed wire which was strung across the sides of the roof. Sand, oil, and garbage were also thrown on them and it was then that one of the squads was doused with acid.
"They ran inside and started stripping off their clothes, crying in pain," said Liat Schlessinger, an army reporter who was on the balcony.
After the acid was thrown, Rabbi Yosi El-Nikaveh, who was evicted from his home yesterday in neighboring Neveh Dekalim, pleaded with the protestors to stop using violence. "Not one of us is moving from here," a protestor replied, using a blow horn.
The Yassam finally gained control of the roof after two more cages carrying officers landed and subdued the crowd, many of whom were teenagers and young adult men. The cages were then used to haul the protestors to the ground where they were either carried by squads of four to six Yassam and border police to waiting busses, or escorted by two if they offered little resistance.
As a near-full moon rose in back of the synagogue three hours after the operation started, a few remaining protestors put their arms around each other, praying and singing from the roof top while waving an orange Gush Katif flag.
Later, around 50 of the few hundred protestors from the roof climbed down to the main cathedral where they prayed together with the Yassam before boarding busses.
For the first hour of the operation, Yassam and border patrol officers removed around 250 peaceful protestors from the bottom floor of the synagogue.
After army engineers banged down the front door using a battering ram, one squad of Yassam began throwing chairs, tables, desks and crates from the doorway. When they cleared a sufficient path, border police and additional Yassam units ran in and began evicted protestors.
The mostly teenage protestors were sitting on an oil soaked floor, linking arms in a human chain. Many continued to pray and cry as the officers removed them. Most were carried out, though they offered no real physical resistance, while others walked out under police escort.
"Take pictures of the Jewish expulsion," one teenage boy screamed to a group of photographers as he struggled with officers carrying him onto the bus.
At least two babies were carried out by female Yassam officers who removed two families and many women.
One Yassam officer cried with a boy, around 12, whom he carried out to the side of the road, putting his arm around him and telling him "it will be OK, you’re alright now."
During the first part of the operation, Benny Alon, a far-right Kinnest Member used a blow horn to address the officers. "Look what you’re doing. The Arabs destroyed [the synagogue] in the War of Independence and now you’re destroying it again," he said.
Kfar Darom is built on the same spot as a Jewish town by the identical name that was lost in the 1948 war to Arab forces.
After clearing out the bottom floor of the synagogue, officers took a twenty minute break while protestors on the roof sang "don’t forget the hope," a lyric from a popular Israeli song.
Earlier in the day, the protestors on the roof threw eggs and light bulbs filled with paint at busses carrying people who were removed from their homes by soldiers here. Every time someone was led or carried to the bus, they booed loudly, often yelling "shame on you, shame" at the soldiers.
One female Yassam officer was injured when a bus taking protestors struck her as it pulled away from the synagogue.
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel
By Rafael D. Frankel
KFAR DAROM, Gaza—Police SWAT teams were doused with acid and a barrage of paint, sand, oil, garbage, and water melon rinds as they stormed the central Synagogue here Thursday to remove protestors who had barricaded themselves on the roof.
At least five policemen from Israel’s elite Yasaam unit had acid dumped on them as they tried to climb to the roof from a second-story balcony and were led out of the synagogue by fellow police wearing only underwear.
The operation to remove the estimated 1,000 protestors, many of whom had illegally infiltrated Gaza in the last week, lasted more than two-and-a-half hours.
The protestors barricaded the front doors to the synagogue and welded shut the only entrance to the roof. After removing peaceful protestors from the ground floor, two cranes lifted dozens of officers in cages onto the roof.
After earlier attempts to land on the roof were thwarted by protestors brandishing long wooden beams and metal poles, the Yassam reequipped its officers with fire extinguishers which they used in tandem with a mobile water cannon on the street to keep the protestors at bay while they landed on the roof.
Simultaneously, two squads of four officers threw ladders to the roof from the balcony, climbing them together holding shields over their heads.
For more than 15 minutes protestors heaved paint from a blow horn and used sticks to repel the lead officer who cut the barbed wire which was strung across the sides of the roof. Sand, oil, and garbage were also thrown on them and it was then that one of the squads was doused with acid.
"They ran inside and started stripping off their clothes, crying in pain," said Liat Schlessinger, an army reporter who was on the balcony.
After the acid was thrown, Rabbi Yosi El-Nikaveh, who was evicted from his home yesterday in neighboring Neveh Dekalim, pleaded with the protestors to stop using violence. "Not one of us is moving from here," a protestor replied, using a blow horn.
The Yassam finally gained control of the roof after two more cages carrying officers landed and subdued the crowd, many of whom were teenagers and young adult men. The cages were then used to haul the protestors to the ground where they were either carried by squads of four to six Yassam and border police to waiting busses, or escorted by two if they offered little resistance.
As a near-full moon rose in back of the synagogue three hours after the operation started, a few remaining protestors put their arms around each other, praying and singing from the roof top while waving an orange Gush Katif flag.
Later, around 50 of the few hundred protestors from the roof climbed down to the main cathedral where they prayed together with the Yassam before boarding busses.
For the first hour of the operation, Yassam and border patrol officers removed around 250 peaceful protestors from the bottom floor of the synagogue.
After army engineers banged down the front door using a battering ram, one squad of Yassam began throwing chairs, tables, desks and crates from the doorway. When they cleared a sufficient path, border police and additional Yassam units ran in and began evicted protestors.
The mostly teenage protestors were sitting on an oil soaked floor, linking arms in a human chain. Many continued to pray and cry as the officers removed them. Most were carried out, though they offered no real physical resistance, while others walked out under police escort.
"Take pictures of the Jewish expulsion," one teenage boy screamed to a group of photographers as he struggled with officers carrying him onto the bus.
At least two babies were carried out by female Yassam officers who removed two families and many women.
One Yassam officer cried with a boy, around 12, whom he carried out to the side of the road, putting his arm around him and telling him "it will be OK, you’re alright now."
During the first part of the operation, Benny Alon, a far-right Kinnest Member used a blow horn to address the officers. "Look what you’re doing. The Arabs destroyed [the synagogue] in the War of Independence and now you’re destroying it again," he said.
Kfar Darom is built on the same spot as a Jewish town by the identical name that was lost in the 1948 war to Arab forces.
After clearing out the bottom floor of the synagogue, officers took a twenty minute break while protestors on the roof sang "don’t forget the hope," a lyric from a popular Israeli song.
Earlier in the day, the protestors on the roof threw eggs and light bulbs filled with paint at busses carrying people who were removed from their homes by soldiers here. Every time someone was led or carried to the bus, they booed loudly, often yelling "shame on you, shame" at the soldiers.
One female Yassam officer was injured when a bus taking protestors struck her as it pulled away from the synagogue.
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel
Thursday, August 18, 2005
In mourning, resisters picked up, carried out
In mourning, resisters picked up, carried out
Amid tears and denunciations by settlers, Israel's evacuation of the Gaza Strip's largest Jewish enclave takes shape with little violence
By Joel Greenberg, Tribune foreign correspondent. Rafael D. Frankel contributed to this report
Published August 18, 2005
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip -- Adiel Grossmak, his shirt torn in a traditional Jewish sign of mourning, couldn't walk out the door.
Asked to leave his home by a squad of Israeli army officers, Grossmak, 24, requested that he be carried.
"I can't go out," he told the officer in charge, sitting on his living room couch. "I'm not angry with you, but what can I do?"
"I know, brother," the officer replied.
"I pity you," Grossmak said before he was picked up and carried to his car by four officers, as neighbors cried and shouted at the soldiers: "Shame on you."
So it went from morning until night in the neighborhoods of Neve Dekalim, the largest Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip, which was slowly emptied of many of its 2,600 residents Wednesday.
A pall of grief hung over the settlement as teams of officers and police went door to door, guided by aerial photos showing every house in the community and by briefings on the families inside
Wearing vests and hats displaying the Israeli flag and state emblem, the security forces went house to house, negotiating and persuading settlers to leave their homes. In most cases they succeeded. When they didn't, resisters were picked up and taken to waiting buses.
The day passed with little violence but great emotion. Women and children wept as they were led out of their homes, and some officers also shed tears.
"How can you do such a thing? You are our brothers," sobbed Tova Elia when the evacuation team stepped into her living room. "You are the Israel Defense Forces. You are Jewish soldiers. You are supposed to defend the country."
As the teams made their grim rounds, they came under a barrage of protests by settlers who urged them to refuse orders.
"Robots! Aren't you ashamed to expel a Jew from his home in the Land of Israel?" one man shouted. "Where is your heart? What will you tell your children?"
Face to face with an officer outside the house where he grew up, Roi Tanami, 24, rejected an offer of assistance in arranging transportation out of Neve Dekalim.
"We want to stay here," Tanami said. "This is our house, and we are being expelled. Why? I haven't heard an explanation."
The officer replied: "I'm doing it for the good of the state."
"You think so?" Tanami asked. "Do you and I deserve this? They've made us enemies, and it will be hard for me to forgive that."
On a sidewalk, a young woman offered children's toys from Neve Dekalim homes to a group of border police. "Take a souvenir of the lives you have destroyed," she said, in tears. "Their childhood is over. Dear soldiers, how can you? We are one people."
The officers pulled their caps low over their eyes and looked away.
Residents embraced and cried, and angry youths turned over garbage bins and set the refuse on fire, sending up plumes of acrid smoke.
Loudspeakers on the roof of the main synagogue broadcast a message of encouragement: "They are trying to expel us from our homes, but our spirit is strong, and we will continue together the whole way."
Inside the synagogue, girls sobbed as a rabbi eulogized the Israeli settlement enclave in the Gaza Strip, known as Gush Katif. "We are building the state of Katif," the rabbi said. "If they don't want us here, we will be everywhere."
There were also moments of physical struggle.
At the home of Shimon and Dikla Cohen, 25 extended family members who had barricaded themselves in the house were removed in a two-hour confrontation that left several officers in tears and one soldier so distraught that he shouted: "What are we doing, taking people from their homes?"
It took nine soldiers to restrain the Cohens' oldest son, Haniel, as he was carried from the house.
As Rabbi Eldad Sharabi left his home with his family, his 17-year-old son, Akiva, prostrated himself on the ground, racked with sobs. "I won't go," he cried, "I won't leave the land of Israel." A group of soldiers carried him to a bus.
At day's end, hundreds of youths gathered at the synagogue singing and waving the Israeli flag from the roof. Ranks of police gathered around the building in what looked like an imminent confrontation.
But an agreement was reached to hold off further evictions, and the police were called away.
"The army has agreed to freeze the situation," said an announcement on the synagogue loudspeaker.
"The expulsion will resume tomorrow."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Amid tears and denunciations by settlers, Israel's evacuation of the Gaza Strip's largest Jewish enclave takes shape with little violence
By Joel Greenberg, Tribune foreign correspondent. Rafael D. Frankel contributed to this report
Published August 18, 2005
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip -- Adiel Grossmak, his shirt torn in a traditional Jewish sign of mourning, couldn't walk out the door.
Asked to leave his home by a squad of Israeli army officers, Grossmak, 24, requested that he be carried.
"I can't go out," he told the officer in charge, sitting on his living room couch. "I'm not angry with you, but what can I do?"
"I know, brother," the officer replied.
"I pity you," Grossmak said before he was picked up and carried to his car by four officers, as neighbors cried and shouted at the soldiers: "Shame on you."
So it went from morning until night in the neighborhoods of Neve Dekalim, the largest Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip, which was slowly emptied of many of its 2,600 residents Wednesday.
A pall of grief hung over the settlement as teams of officers and police went door to door, guided by aerial photos showing every house in the community and by briefings on the families inside
Wearing vests and hats displaying the Israeli flag and state emblem, the security forces went house to house, negotiating and persuading settlers to leave their homes. In most cases they succeeded. When they didn't, resisters were picked up and taken to waiting buses.
The day passed with little violence but great emotion. Women and children wept as they were led out of their homes, and some officers also shed tears.
"How can you do such a thing? You are our brothers," sobbed Tova Elia when the evacuation team stepped into her living room. "You are the Israel Defense Forces. You are Jewish soldiers. You are supposed to defend the country."
As the teams made their grim rounds, they came under a barrage of protests by settlers who urged them to refuse orders.
"Robots! Aren't you ashamed to expel a Jew from his home in the Land of Israel?" one man shouted. "Where is your heart? What will you tell your children?"
Face to face with an officer outside the house where he grew up, Roi Tanami, 24, rejected an offer of assistance in arranging transportation out of Neve Dekalim.
"We want to stay here," Tanami said. "This is our house, and we are being expelled. Why? I haven't heard an explanation."
The officer replied: "I'm doing it for the good of the state."
"You think so?" Tanami asked. "Do you and I deserve this? They've made us enemies, and it will be hard for me to forgive that."
On a sidewalk, a young woman offered children's toys from Neve Dekalim homes to a group of border police. "Take a souvenir of the lives you have destroyed," she said, in tears. "Their childhood is over. Dear soldiers, how can you? We are one people."
The officers pulled their caps low over their eyes and looked away.
Residents embraced and cried, and angry youths turned over garbage bins and set the refuse on fire, sending up plumes of acrid smoke.
Loudspeakers on the roof of the main synagogue broadcast a message of encouragement: "They are trying to expel us from our homes, but our spirit is strong, and we will continue together the whole way."
Inside the synagogue, girls sobbed as a rabbi eulogized the Israeli settlement enclave in the Gaza Strip, known as Gush Katif. "We are building the state of Katif," the rabbi said. "If they don't want us here, we will be everywhere."
There were also moments of physical struggle.
At the home of Shimon and Dikla Cohen, 25 extended family members who had barricaded themselves in the house were removed in a two-hour confrontation that left several officers in tears and one soldier so distraught that he shouted: "What are we doing, taking people from their homes?"
It took nine soldiers to restrain the Cohens' oldest son, Haniel, as he was carried from the house.
As Rabbi Eldad Sharabi left his home with his family, his 17-year-old son, Akiva, prostrated himself on the ground, racked with sobs. "I won't go," he cried, "I won't leave the land of Israel." A group of soldiers carried him to a bus.
At day's end, hundreds of youths gathered at the synagogue singing and waving the Israeli flag from the roof. Ranks of police gathered around the building in what looked like an imminent confrontation.
But an agreement was reached to hold off further evictions, and the police were called away.
"The army has agreed to freeze the situation," said an announcement on the synagogue loudspeaker.
"The expulsion will resume tomorrow."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
1st forced evictions sweep across Gaza
1st forced evictions sweep across Gaza
Israeli troops persuade some, drag others from homes
By Joel Greenberg and Christine Spolar, Tribune foreign correspondents. Joel Greenberg reported from Neve Dekalim, with Christine Spolar in Gaza City; Rafael D. Frankel in Neve Dekalim and Sharon Pazn
Published August 18, 2005
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip -- With speed and patience, Israeli army and police Wednesday persuaded hundreds of Jewish settlers to give up the fight to stay in Gaza and dragged away scores more from homes and even synagogues when they refused to obey the law.
By daybreak, troops fanned out across six of 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, all planned for extinction. By nightfall, all but one were empty, army officials said. About 14,000 troops were involved in the operation to end a 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip.
As the evacuation unfolded, teenage boys sought refuge from the authorities by climbing atop the red-tile roofs of targeted homes. Middle-age men in white prayer shawls prayed non-stop and forced the troops to haul them away. Women wailed, and young men ripped their shirts, a traditional sign of mourning. Some settlers wore Stars of David on their T-shirts, hearkening back to Nazi-era humiliation, to protest the military's actions.
"You should be ashamed of yourselves," one settler shouted at the soldiers. "What will you tell your children?"
There were confrontations and bitter denouncements, but Israeli forces, trained for months for the sensitive duty, proceeded at a pace and manner that prevented any serious incident. A female soldier was slightly injured when she was stabbed with a needle during a confrontation at the settlement of Morag.
In the West Bank, meanwhile, a Jewish taxi driver shot and killed four Palestinians who worked at an aluminum factory in the settlement of Shiloh.
The man, a longtime driver in the area, shot to death two Palestinians he drove to work and then entered the factory, shooting randomly and killing two more men. The suspect, identified as Asher Weisgan, 40, was taken into custody.
It was the second attack in two weeks by an Israeli Jew in relation to the withdrawal. The radical Islamic group Hamas threatened to respond Wednesday night, but spokesman Mushir al-Masri added that Hamas also wanted to see the Gaza pullout proceed.
Maj. Gen. Dan Harel of the Israeli army's southern command indicated in a news briefing that the Gaza mission was difficult for everyone, but he praised, in particular, Palestinian security cooperation.
"There was great coordination all day long," Harel said. Thousands of Palestinian troops are working with the army to safeguard the settlers from attacks.
The six settlements targeted Wednesday were Morag, Neve Dekalim, Bedolah, Ganei Tal, Tel Katifa and Kerem Atzmona. All but Neve Dekalim, the largest settlement approached Wednesday, were emptied, military officials and witnesses said. The speed of the pullout appeared faster than expected; those who remained were described as infiltrators who had vowed to resist.
According to army statistics, 1,736 civilians were evacuated Wednesday. Authorities estimated that 675--about half the number who were there in the morning--remained in Neve Dekalim when soldiers stopped evictions about 8:30 p.m.
Three other settlements in northern Gaza--Dugit, Elei Sinai and Nissanit--were largely empty of residents, army officials said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has made repeated appeals for a peaceful pullout, called the West Bank shooting an "act of Jewish terror" aimed at "innocent Palestinians in the warped desire to . . . stop the disengagement plan."
Earlier in the day, Sharon conveyed empathy for those who disagreed with his decision to abandon Gaza for security reasons but still obeyed. The evacuation, broadcast from all the settlements throughout the day, was "impossible to watch . . . and that includes myself, without tears in the eyes," Sharon said at a news conference.
But Sharon, who long encouraged settlers to move into Gaza, said he hoped those who had to leave their homes would show restraint.
"I'm appealing to everyone. Don't attack the men and women in uniform. Don't accuse them. Don't make it harder for them, don't harm them. Attack me. I am responsible for this. Attack me. Accuse me," Sharon said.
The Gaza withdrawal had been expected to take weeks. Late Wednesday, army officials shied away from setting a new deadline but they said that settlements could be emptied of Israeli citizens within days.
Neve Dekalim is a case in point. Authorities had expected to spend days there. But army officials said Wednesday night they expected the settlement would be cleared within 24 hours.
The day started emotionally at Neve Dekalim, the largest settlement targeted Wednesday, with 2,600 people. At 10 a.m. the faithful still were praying for a miracle, hours after the order to leave went into effect and soldiers arrived to begin the eviction.
By midday, army officials said 158 houses had been emptied in an initial sweep. Then troops began door-to-door house calls.
The police and soldiers lined up only to be met by settlers, some in tears, who pleaded with them to disobey orders. Sometimes the settlers derided them.
Some soldiers wiped away their own tears during the confrontations. There were no reported cases of insubordination among the ranks or refusal to carry out orders.
Acts of defiance and sorrow played out in almost all the settlements.
Many of the protesters were young and resorted to wails of distress as they were dragged to the buses. "I want to die," screamed one boy as he was lifted away.
One young man, even as he was pushed onto a bus, couldn't resist taunting the soldiers. "You will live with this the rest of your life," he screamed, waving two orange ribbons from the bus window. Settlers had chosen the color orange as sign of resistance.
At Kfar Darom, a settlement due to be evacuated in the next few days, several settlers pushed large cinder blocks off a bridge and tried to burn down a nearby Arab-owned house, The Associated Press reported. Palestinians threw stones at the settlers until Israeli troops arrived, doused the fire and pushed the Israelis back into the settlement.
In a shocking act of protest over the pullout, a 54-year-old woman from the West Bank set herself afire at a police roadblock in southern Israel. She suffered life-threatening burns over 70 percent of her body, police and hospital officials said.
Soldiers and police, wearing black baseball caps and vests, tried time and again to persuade homeowners in Neve Dekalim to leave, offering to help them onto buses or drive them away in cars. When that didn't work, the troops continued their mission with restraint but muscle.
In one case, soldiers broke into a home to drag out, one by one, an extended family of 25. Some were carried out struggling and screaming into the hot sun and loaded onto buses.
The main synagogue was packed throughout the day as youths gathered to sing and pray. Others resisted in the street by turning over trash bins and burning garbage in a futile attempt to block the police.
After hours of dissent, hundreds of students at the main yeshiva in Neve Dekalim finally came to an agreement with the army. The students and soldiers gathered in a circle and put their arms around one another. Then the students boarded the bus and left Gaza behind.
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
A bitter and anguished departure
A bitter and anguished departure
Troops confront defiant thousands
By Joel Greenberg and Rafael D. Frankel, Chicago Tribune. Tribune foreign correspondent Joel Greenberg reported from Neve Dekalim and Gadid, and Rafael D. Frankel reported from Neve Dekalim
Published August 17, 2005
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip -- Israel sent forces into the largest settlement in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning in preparation for the forcible evacuation of Jewish settlers from their homes.
On one street about 100 soldiers and border police lined up outside some houses and were confronted by demonstrators who urged them to refuse orders.
"You are expelling Jews," shouted one demonstrator at Neve Dekalim. "This is an illegal order. Where is your conscience?"
Protesters overturned trash containers and set garbage on fire in an attempt to block police, but the barricades were quickly cleared.
The deadline for Jewish settlers to leave Gaza passed at midnight Tuesday, but thousands of settlers and outside protesters remained, setting the stage for an anxious and long anticipated showdown.
Hours before the deadline, Israeli forces clashed with pullout opponents, and many settlers made their exodus.
The protesters--mostly young people who were not Gaza settlers--confronted the authorities at midday Tuesday when moving vans were brought into the settlement to help residents who asked for assistance. Some demonstrators were arrested.
The settlers had until midnight to leave on their own before the start of forcible eviction by troops Wednesday. Benny Silberman, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, said protesters who came into Gaza in recent weeks would be removed first and then the residents. Israel is evacuating nearly 9,000 settlers as part of its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and officials estimated that about half of them left before the deadline.
On Tuesday evening, cars and pickup trucks piled high with furniture, plants and other household goods began streaming through the Kissufim Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, as the departure by many settlers gathered steam.
Those who were leaving flew Israeli flags from their cars along with banners and ribbons that were bright orange, the color of the anti-withdrawal protest campaign.
`Evacuated from our home'
A car carrying the Dafna family from the settlement of Gan-Or carried a homemade sign: "Today we were evacuated from our home."
Just past the crossing into Israel, a lone settler, wearing an orange ribbon, stood by the line of passing vehicles and wept, exclaiming, "Why, why?"
At the settlement of Gadid, Benny Yemini turned off the sprinklers for the last time on the main lawn at this farming settlement in the dunes of the Gaza Strip as members prepared to gather for a last, sorrowful farewell before leaving.
"I watered the lawn until this morning," said Yemini, 55, who was in charge of development at Gadid. "These were my children--the flowers and the trees, and now that's it.
"This morning I said goodbye to the trees, to the lawn," Yemini said. "People are leaving and everything is green, so they can see with their eyes that it's all blooming, smiling, not withered and dry."
Reality hit home Tuesday morning in Gadid when groups of soldiers accompanied by civilian workers arrived to help residents pack up.
An army colonel made the rounds, meeting with families to discuss the move out to hotels and temporary housing.
"It's a difficult feeling for everyone," said Lt. Col. Udi Zecharia, the commander of the unit working in Gadid. "They are here to love the families, to help them and hug them."
At a home that was stripped of all its furniture and appliances, Gila and Moshe Maimon sat where a large window had been and reflected on more than 20 years of life in Gadid.
The Maimons were leaving Tuesday, but their 16-year-old daughter, along with other teenage friends, insisted on staying until the forcible eviction.
"There was crying and screaming, and she said that she would never forgive us if we didn't let her stay," Gila Maimon said.
Most of the people at Gadid, a community of 350 people, are planning to move together to Nitzan, a temporary housing development for evacuated Gaza settlers on the coast of southern Israel, about 15 miles north of the Gaza Strip. Others were scattering to other areas.
At the final gathering of the settlement--a tearful assembly resembling a funeral--speakers vowed to maintain the fabric of their community.
"We may not have taken the buildings and this sacred land with us, but we are taking the community, and that will be the formula for establishing our new home," said Yigal Hedaya, the settlement rabbi.
Hananel Elul, 18, weak with grief, said: "We did everything we could. We are part of something that doesn't end here."
Yehiam Sharabi, 57, a pepper grower who came to Gadid 23 years ago, returned from morning synagogue services to find the soldiers in his house. The Sharabis had posted a sign on their door for the troops.
"Dear soldier/police officer," it said. "The Sharabi family lived here for the last 23 years. We were compelled by the decree to leave our home. We don't do it easily, just as you were given the order to carry out the mission of expulsion.
`With love and understanding'
"Therefore we the Sharabi family declare that we will do everything to minimize the difficult experience for you and us, and we will do everything in as pleasant an atmosphere as possible. With love and understanding, the Sharabi Family."
The greeting for Israeli forces Tuesday at Neve Dekalim wasn't nearly as genteel.
There was no resistance in the morning when police sawed off the gates, which had been sealed by pullout opponents. But when the moving vans arrived at midday, protesters blocked the road, chanting, "Soldiers! Policemen! Refuse your orders!"
They threw paint, stones and empty water bottles. A dumpster was dragged into the road, where protesters threw tables, chairs and desks into it and set it on fire. Police brought in an armored truck with a water cannon to extinguish the flames.
Many of the settlement's 521 families had already left, and 31 families requested help from the army to move.
Shlomo Shunam Ha-Levi, 57, was among those waiting for the moving vans. "I just want to go now. This chaos is really not what I wanted," said Ha-Levi, who lived there for 18 years.
More soldiers and police entered the settlement at night, fanning out in groups of 15. Going door-to-door, they told residents it was time to leave and offered to help them move.
The officer in charge of one unit, Udi Weizmann, approached one house and was met by Emanuel Weinberger, the uncle of the woman who lived there. "It's really good to meet you," the officer said.
"It's not good to meet you--it's really not," said the uncle. "Think about this: What kind of state are you representing? This is something for the SS, for the Nazis, to do--to expel a Jew from his house in the middle of the night. Today you are fascists."
"We are hurting, too," the officer said.
"You aren't hurting at all," said the uncle.
"This is not a Holocaust," the officer told him.
"Who are you to tell me?" asked the uncle. "You weren't even born then. I was. You are Jewish Nazis."
Later at another house, the officer told another angry woman, "Think what would happen if each soldier did what he wanted to do instead of what he was ordered to do. What kind of state would that be?"
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Troops confront defiant thousands
By Joel Greenberg and Rafael D. Frankel, Chicago Tribune. Tribune foreign correspondent Joel Greenberg reported from Neve Dekalim and Gadid, and Rafael D. Frankel reported from Neve Dekalim
Published August 17, 2005
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip -- Israel sent forces into the largest settlement in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning in preparation for the forcible evacuation of Jewish settlers from their homes.
On one street about 100 soldiers and border police lined up outside some houses and were confronted by demonstrators who urged them to refuse orders.
"You are expelling Jews," shouted one demonstrator at Neve Dekalim. "This is an illegal order. Where is your conscience?"
Protesters overturned trash containers and set garbage on fire in an attempt to block police, but the barricades were quickly cleared.
The deadline for Jewish settlers to leave Gaza passed at midnight Tuesday, but thousands of settlers and outside protesters remained, setting the stage for an anxious and long anticipated showdown.
Hours before the deadline, Israeli forces clashed with pullout opponents, and many settlers made their exodus.
The protesters--mostly young people who were not Gaza settlers--confronted the authorities at midday Tuesday when moving vans were brought into the settlement to help residents who asked for assistance. Some demonstrators were arrested.
The settlers had until midnight to leave on their own before the start of forcible eviction by troops Wednesday. Benny Silberman, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces, said protesters who came into Gaza in recent weeks would be removed first and then the residents. Israel is evacuating nearly 9,000 settlers as part of its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and officials estimated that about half of them left before the deadline.
On Tuesday evening, cars and pickup trucks piled high with furniture, plants and other household goods began streaming through the Kissufim Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, as the departure by many settlers gathered steam.
Those who were leaving flew Israeli flags from their cars along with banners and ribbons that were bright orange, the color of the anti-withdrawal protest campaign.
`Evacuated from our home'
A car carrying the Dafna family from the settlement of Gan-Or carried a homemade sign: "Today we were evacuated from our home."
Just past the crossing into Israel, a lone settler, wearing an orange ribbon, stood by the line of passing vehicles and wept, exclaiming, "Why, why?"
At the settlement of Gadid, Benny Yemini turned off the sprinklers for the last time on the main lawn at this farming settlement in the dunes of the Gaza Strip as members prepared to gather for a last, sorrowful farewell before leaving.
"I watered the lawn until this morning," said Yemini, 55, who was in charge of development at Gadid. "These were my children--the flowers and the trees, and now that's it.
"This morning I said goodbye to the trees, to the lawn," Yemini said. "People are leaving and everything is green, so they can see with their eyes that it's all blooming, smiling, not withered and dry."
Reality hit home Tuesday morning in Gadid when groups of soldiers accompanied by civilian workers arrived to help residents pack up.
An army colonel made the rounds, meeting with families to discuss the move out to hotels and temporary housing.
"It's a difficult feeling for everyone," said Lt. Col. Udi Zecharia, the commander of the unit working in Gadid. "They are here to love the families, to help them and hug them."
At a home that was stripped of all its furniture and appliances, Gila and Moshe Maimon sat where a large window had been and reflected on more than 20 years of life in Gadid.
The Maimons were leaving Tuesday, but their 16-year-old daughter, along with other teenage friends, insisted on staying until the forcible eviction.
"There was crying and screaming, and she said that she would never forgive us if we didn't let her stay," Gila Maimon said.
Most of the people at Gadid, a community of 350 people, are planning to move together to Nitzan, a temporary housing development for evacuated Gaza settlers on the coast of southern Israel, about 15 miles north of the Gaza Strip. Others were scattering to other areas.
At the final gathering of the settlement--a tearful assembly resembling a funeral--speakers vowed to maintain the fabric of their community.
"We may not have taken the buildings and this sacred land with us, but we are taking the community, and that will be the formula for establishing our new home," said Yigal Hedaya, the settlement rabbi.
Hananel Elul, 18, weak with grief, said: "We did everything we could. We are part of something that doesn't end here."
Yehiam Sharabi, 57, a pepper grower who came to Gadid 23 years ago, returned from morning synagogue services to find the soldiers in his house. The Sharabis had posted a sign on their door for the troops.
"Dear soldier/police officer," it said. "The Sharabi family lived here for the last 23 years. We were compelled by the decree to leave our home. We don't do it easily, just as you were given the order to carry out the mission of expulsion.
`With love and understanding'
"Therefore we the Sharabi family declare that we will do everything to minimize the difficult experience for you and us, and we will do everything in as pleasant an atmosphere as possible. With love and understanding, the Sharabi Family."
The greeting for Israeli forces Tuesday at Neve Dekalim wasn't nearly as genteel.
There was no resistance in the morning when police sawed off the gates, which had been sealed by pullout opponents. But when the moving vans arrived at midday, protesters blocked the road, chanting, "Soldiers! Policemen! Refuse your orders!"
They threw paint, stones and empty water bottles. A dumpster was dragged into the road, where protesters threw tables, chairs and desks into it and set it on fire. Police brought in an armored truck with a water cannon to extinguish the flames.
Many of the settlement's 521 families had already left, and 31 families requested help from the army to move.
Shlomo Shunam Ha-Levi, 57, was among those waiting for the moving vans. "I just want to go now. This chaos is really not what I wanted," said Ha-Levi, who lived there for 18 years.
More soldiers and police entered the settlement at night, fanning out in groups of 15. Going door-to-door, they told residents it was time to leave and offered to help them move.
The officer in charge of one unit, Udi Weizmann, approached one house and was met by Emanuel Weinberger, the uncle of the woman who lived there. "It's really good to meet you," the officer said.
"It's not good to meet you--it's really not," said the uncle. "Think about this: What kind of state are you representing? This is something for the SS, for the Nazis, to do--to expel a Jew from his house in the middle of the night. Today you are fascists."
"We are hurting, too," the officer said.
"You aren't hurting at all," said the uncle.
"This is not a Holocaust," the officer told him.
"Who are you to tell me?" asked the uncle. "You weren't even born then. I was. You are Jewish Nazis."
Later at another house, the officer told another angry woman, "Think what would happen if each soldier did what he wanted to do instead of what he was ordered to do. What kind of state would that be?"
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Settlers resigned, resistant in Gaza
Settlers resigned, resistant in Gaza
Protesters delay eviction notices
By Joel Greenberg, Tribune foreign correspondent. Rafael D. Frankel contributed to this report
Published August 16, 2005
GADID, Gaza Strip -- Israeli settlers facing evacuation from the Gaza Strip massed at the gates of some of their communities Monday and prevented army officers from delivering eviction notices requiring them to leave their homes by midnight Tuesday.
The protest action, during which the settlers appealed to officers to disobey orders and challenged them in emotional exchanges, was a taste of scenes to come when troops are to begin ousting settlers from their homes, an operation set to begin on Wednesday.
"Difficult days await us," said Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, chief of the army's southern command. "The hardest day will be when we will knock on the door and ask a family to go out, but we know why we are doing it. . . . We are doing it in the name of the state, carrying out a legal decision passed at all possible levels."
Even as the settlers protested, moving vans continued to roll into their communities as some residents shipped out belongings in preparation for departure. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that 300 of the 1,600 families in the Gaza settlements already had left. Military officials said they expected a large exodus Tuesday as the midnight deadline approached.
The doomed settlements appeared torn between resignation and resistance, with many residents accepting that they must leave, and others, including thousands of recently arrived supporters from West Bank settlements, vowing to fight on. Israel is leaving the Gaza Strip after a 38-year occupation.
At a gate leading to the settlements of Gadid and Gan Or early Monday, scores of protesters held a sunrise prayer service, blocking the road. When an army colonel approached, backed by a busload of police officers, he received an icy reception.
`Go away'
"You have come to expel. Go away," said Shlomo Vanhotsker, a leader of Gan Or. "Where were you all the years we were being shot at?"
"We come in peace," said the colonel, explaining that he wanted to offer help to families in the settlements who wanted to move out.
"There's no one to talk to," Vanhotsker retorted. "We ask that you leave the settlement."
Down the road, three women confronted Eli Levy, a police officer.
"Look me in the eye," one woman said. "Are you ready to come to my house and expel me from my home?"
Levy responded: "I'm prepared to ask you to leave with me, in sorrow and pain."
The woman challenged another officer.
"Do you have any idea what you are coming to do?" she asked. "Do you know what being evacuated means? It means being expelled."
`A government decision'
Another woman said: "Our children are crying at night. They ask me, `How will we leave our toys, the picture on the wall?' How could you do such a thing? This is an un-Jewish order, immoral and inhuman. You won't forget this your whole life."
The officer answered: "I don't want to go into politics. This is a government decision. If a state cannot carry out its own decision, it is no longer a state."
A man shouted: "Use your conscience."
There were other people in history who said they were only following orders."
Although the protests blocked the delivery of the eviction notices in many of the settlements, they eventually were distributed in some communities.
At the settlement of Morag, a settler tore his shirt in a Jewish sign of mourning when he received the order, and his wife ripped the document up.
Protesters scuffled with soldiers and burned tires at Neve Dekalim, the main Jewish settlement, facing off with scores of police officers at the main gate, which the settlers had shut.
Sharon offers praise
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in a televised address to the nation, paid tribute to the Gaza settlers as having completed "a glorious chapter in the story of Israel, a central chapter in the story of your lives as pioneers."
"Your pain and tears are an inseparable part of the history of this country," Sharon said.
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Protesters delay eviction notices
By Joel Greenberg, Tribune foreign correspondent. Rafael D. Frankel contributed to this report
Published August 16, 2005
GADID, Gaza Strip -- Israeli settlers facing evacuation from the Gaza Strip massed at the gates of some of their communities Monday and prevented army officers from delivering eviction notices requiring them to leave their homes by midnight Tuesday.
The protest action, during which the settlers appealed to officers to disobey orders and challenged them in emotional exchanges, was a taste of scenes to come when troops are to begin ousting settlers from their homes, an operation set to begin on Wednesday.
"Difficult days await us," said Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, chief of the army's southern command. "The hardest day will be when we will knock on the door and ask a family to go out, but we know why we are doing it. . . . We are doing it in the name of the state, carrying out a legal decision passed at all possible levels."
Even as the settlers protested, moving vans continued to roll into their communities as some residents shipped out belongings in preparation for departure. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that 300 of the 1,600 families in the Gaza settlements already had left. Military officials said they expected a large exodus Tuesday as the midnight deadline approached.
The doomed settlements appeared torn between resignation and resistance, with many residents accepting that they must leave, and others, including thousands of recently arrived supporters from West Bank settlements, vowing to fight on. Israel is leaving the Gaza Strip after a 38-year occupation.
At a gate leading to the settlements of Gadid and Gan Or early Monday, scores of protesters held a sunrise prayer service, blocking the road. When an army colonel approached, backed by a busload of police officers, he received an icy reception.
`Go away'
"You have come to expel. Go away," said Shlomo Vanhotsker, a leader of Gan Or. "Where were you all the years we were being shot at?"
"We come in peace," said the colonel, explaining that he wanted to offer help to families in the settlements who wanted to move out.
"There's no one to talk to," Vanhotsker retorted. "We ask that you leave the settlement."
Down the road, three women confronted Eli Levy, a police officer.
"Look me in the eye," one woman said. "Are you ready to come to my house and expel me from my home?"
Levy responded: "I'm prepared to ask you to leave with me, in sorrow and pain."
The woman challenged another officer.
"Do you have any idea what you are coming to do?" she asked. "Do you know what being evacuated means? It means being expelled."
`A government decision'
Another woman said: "Our children are crying at night. They ask me, `How will we leave our toys, the picture on the wall?' How could you do such a thing? This is an un-Jewish order, immoral and inhuman. You won't forget this your whole life."
The officer answered: "I don't want to go into politics. This is a government decision. If a state cannot carry out its own decision, it is no longer a state."
A man shouted: "Use your conscience."
There were other people in history who said they were only following orders."
Although the protests blocked the delivery of the eviction notices in many of the settlements, they eventually were distributed in some communities.
At the settlement of Morag, a settler tore his shirt in a Jewish sign of mourning when he received the order, and his wife ripped the document up.
Protesters scuffled with soldiers and burned tires at Neve Dekalim, the main Jewish settlement, facing off with scores of police officers at the main gate, which the settlers had shut.
Sharon offers praise
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in a televised address to the nation, paid tribute to the Gaza settlers as having completed "a glorious chapter in the story of Israel, a central chapter in the story of your lives as pioneers."
"Your pain and tears are an inseparable part of the history of this country," Sharon said.
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Monday, August 15, 2005
Protestors face off with soldiers and police
Protestors face off with soldiers and police
By Rafael D. Frankel
NEVEH DEKALIM, Gaza—Under a blazing sun which sent sweat dripping down brows even in the morning hours, protestors faced off with soldiers and police here Monday in a day of tears, song, hugs between foes and confrontation between allies.
After a morning prayer session at the gates of this town of 528 families, protestors staked their ground on the road just inside the main gate. With the women sitting on the left and the men on the right, they sang Israeli folk tunes as well as solemn hymns as a special police squad dressed in all black jumpsuits formed a line on the other side of the gate facing them.
When it looked as though the police were about to enter the settlement, many women began crying while protestors shouted to the police on the other side of the fence.
"Do you think we're scared of you?" one religious Jew shouted through the barbed wire. "We're not scared of anyone; in cars, or on horses, or wearing black clothes."
One man climbed atop the guard tower donning a Jewish prayer shawl and phylacteries. He turned toward the police and prayed, drawing a throng of photographers who climbed the tower to capture the moment.
But after the police decided against entering the settlement by force just to issue symbolic eviction notices to the residents here, it was the protestors who turned against each other.
When 31 families asked that a convoy of army trucks and personnel be allowed inside the gates to bring them shipping containers and assist in their moving efforts, many of the younger protestors, as well as those who had infiltrated Gaza in the last few days, refused to allow the trucks through.
After community leaders lost the game of strength when they tried to force the gate open against the younger protestors efforts, Southern Command Chief of Police Uri Bar-Lev spoke with a blow horn through the gate. "This is your last warning,," he told the protestors, "you have ten minutes" before we open the gate by force.
In the end, settler leaders climbed the fence and spoke to the young protestors with the same blow horn, finally convincing them to back down and allow the convoy through.
It was the second day in a row there were clashes within the anti-disengagement movement. Just before the Israeli army sealed off Gaza completely at midnight Sunday, the teenage protestors punctured tires on five military vehicles, tore off side view mirrors and burned classified pictures of Gaza along the main highway which runs in front of the settlement.
The confrontation that everyone expected was turned on its head—at least for now. The 50 or so army officers who did enter Neveh Dekalim (through the back entrance) were greeted with mild shoving. But that quickly turned into a dialog between them and residents who both implored them to disobey the order to remove them from their homes and vented their frustrations as well.
"In 20 years, what will you tell your family, your children?" one female settler asked a soldier.
"I'll tell them I was doing my job, carrying out the orders of the state of Israel," he answered.
One local girl began crying as she implored an officer to leave her family in their home. He hugged her and told her "everything would be okay" in the end.
"We understand very much their feelings," said IDF Spokesman Ofer Alfasi. "Many of our friends from the army. They are our brothers. If it helps them to tell us how they are feeling then good, and maybe it will help us to."
At night, the teenagers of Neveh Dekalim traded in there orange protest shirts for yellow and blue basketball jerseys as the last Gaza Basketball League Championship was on the line.
Led by Barak Zigdon's 20 points, and two free throws from Ephraim Manshir, the home team won what will likely be the last finals ever played here.
Fans from Neveh Dekalim and their opponent Netzer Chazani never let up in their cheers for a minute during the game.
With trophies on the line, two boys banged on a garbage can turned upside down with tree branches, one teenager cranked a giant traditional Jewish noise maker, several fans banged out tunes on Moroccan drums, and one girl even played a kazoo.
During his clinching free throws, Manshir, 17, said he thought about the local kids. "I wanted to make them happy, especially in this time," he said.
"In all this hard situation, with all the soldiers today, we just got to play ball and be happy and scream," Manshir's friend Moshe Tovyana, 18, said. "Tomorrow, or tonight, we'll go fight again, but this is one moment with no stress."
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The New York Daily News
By Rafael D. Frankel
NEVEH DEKALIM, Gaza—Under a blazing sun which sent sweat dripping down brows even in the morning hours, protestors faced off with soldiers and police here Monday in a day of tears, song, hugs between foes and confrontation between allies.
After a morning prayer session at the gates of this town of 528 families, protestors staked their ground on the road just inside the main gate. With the women sitting on the left and the men on the right, they sang Israeli folk tunes as well as solemn hymns as a special police squad dressed in all black jumpsuits formed a line on the other side of the gate facing them.
When it looked as though the police were about to enter the settlement, many women began crying while protestors shouted to the police on the other side of the fence.
"Do you think we're scared of you?" one religious Jew shouted through the barbed wire. "We're not scared of anyone; in cars, or on horses, or wearing black clothes."
One man climbed atop the guard tower donning a Jewish prayer shawl and phylacteries. He turned toward the police and prayed, drawing a throng of photographers who climbed the tower to capture the moment.
But after the police decided against entering the settlement by force just to issue symbolic eviction notices to the residents here, it was the protestors who turned against each other.
When 31 families asked that a convoy of army trucks and personnel be allowed inside the gates to bring them shipping containers and assist in their moving efforts, many of the younger protestors, as well as those who had infiltrated Gaza in the last few days, refused to allow the trucks through.
After community leaders lost the game of strength when they tried to force the gate open against the younger protestors efforts, Southern Command Chief of Police Uri Bar-Lev spoke with a blow horn through the gate. "This is your last warning,," he told the protestors, "you have ten minutes" before we open the gate by force.
In the end, settler leaders climbed the fence and spoke to the young protestors with the same blow horn, finally convincing them to back down and allow the convoy through.
It was the second day in a row there were clashes within the anti-disengagement movement. Just before the Israeli army sealed off Gaza completely at midnight Sunday, the teenage protestors punctured tires on five military vehicles, tore off side view mirrors and burned classified pictures of Gaza along the main highway which runs in front of the settlement.
The confrontation that everyone expected was turned on its head—at least for now. The 50 or so army officers who did enter Neveh Dekalim (through the back entrance) were greeted with mild shoving. But that quickly turned into a dialog between them and residents who both implored them to disobey the order to remove them from their homes and vented their frustrations as well.
"In 20 years, what will you tell your family, your children?" one female settler asked a soldier.
"I'll tell them I was doing my job, carrying out the orders of the state of Israel," he answered.
One local girl began crying as she implored an officer to leave her family in their home. He hugged her and told her "everything would be okay" in the end.
"We understand very much their feelings," said IDF Spokesman Ofer Alfasi. "Many of our friends from the army. They are our brothers. If it helps them to tell us how they are feeling then good, and maybe it will help us to."
At night, the teenagers of Neveh Dekalim traded in there orange protest shirts for yellow and blue basketball jerseys as the last Gaza Basketball League Championship was on the line.
Led by Barak Zigdon's 20 points, and two free throws from Ephraim Manshir, the home team won what will likely be the last finals ever played here.
Fans from Neveh Dekalim and their opponent Netzer Chazani never let up in their cheers for a minute during the game.
With trophies on the line, two boys banged on a garbage can turned upside down with tree branches, one teenager cranked a giant traditional Jewish noise maker, several fans banged out tunes on Moroccan drums, and one girl even played a kazoo.
During his clinching free throws, Manshir, 17, said he thought about the local kids. "I wanted to make them happy, especially in this time," he said.
"In all this hard situation, with all the soldiers today, we just got to play ball and be happy and scream," Manshir's friend Moshe Tovyana, 18, said. "Tomorrow, or tonight, we'll go fight again, but this is one moment with no stress."
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The New York Daily News
Sunday, August 14, 2005
The last Shabbat in Gaza?
The last Shabbat in Gaza?
By Rafael D. Frankel, Sheera Claire Frenkel and Tovah Lazaroff
NEVEH DEKALIM - Surrounded by a sea of men in white shirts and prayer shawls, Levanon Menachem Artzieli was introduced to the world Saturday morning in the central Syangogue amidst a crowd which overflowed into the central square and broke out into loud singing upon the announcement of his name.
Though the settlers remain defiant, vowing that the Jewish community will flourish here for years to come, Artzieli's will likely be the last circumsion in Gush Katif.
Throughout the largest settlement block in Gaza, community dinners, services and celebrations were held to commemorate Shabbat even as many residents insisted this would be far from the last time they would all gather together in the towns they built from sand dunes more than 20 years ago.
With the population of Neveh Dekalim now double what it was just one week ago, it does not look like a town which is about to be emptied and razed.
Thousands of youths who made it past the Kissufim roadblock during the week filled the streets throughout the Shabbat weekend.
"This is a Shabbat like any other, the only special thing is that it's a greater mitzvah, we have all these extra guests," said Eva Gadit, who was expecting more than a dozen people at her table. "We will talk and eat as we always have. I don't think we will need to talk about the disengagement, we don't like politics at the Shabbat table and there is enough talk about that already."
In the Gadit kitchen, pots crowded the countertop and ziplock bags filled with salads toppled out of the fridge every time it was opened. A plastic laundry bucket, overflowing with couscous sat at the foot of the table, too heavy to be lifted up.
Anti-Disengagement activists from around the country donated hundreds of pounds of food to feed the thousands of newly arrived Shabbat guests.
Like many other homes, conversation skirted the topic of the disengagement in favor of the "celebration dinner," an event the settlers here plan to hold when, "the miracle occurs and the soldiers leave and we keep our homes," Gadit said.
Some residents said they may have preferred to spend this Shabbat alone with their families. "But when [our friends] called and said they wanted to be here with us, we couldn't refuse," said Yafa Dahan, 45, an 18-year Neveh Dekalim resident.
"I hope this isn't the last time I'm cooking Shabbat dinner here," she said in tears at her dining room table before walking back to the kitchen, her cooking a distraction from the thoughts she tries to avoid.
In the home of one family of five, all seven of the guests went around the table telling tales of how they arrived in the last few days. A 22-year-old from Bnei Barak said she came in with a forged identity card pretending to be a married woman. Another young man, on leave from the army, said he donned his uniform and convinced the guards that he was serving in the area. An activist from the United States sneaked in on a food truck. He said he had recently been engaged and was hoping to hold the wedding in Neveh Dekalim in the fall.
In the adjacent settlement Gadid, the mood was markedly different as the town's 50 families ate dinner in the central square without the flocks of youths who have made Neveh Dekalim feel at times like a summer camp.
Unlike it's larger sister town, the majority of Gadid residents have begun packing and have generally accepted that in less than a week's time, they will be compelled to leave their 23-year-old community, never to return.
"It's impossible to know the plan God has for us," the Rabbi Yigal Adaya of Gadid said after the meal. "But in the end, we know whatever he does will be better for us."
In addition to praying for a change of heart from the government, Adaya told his community to "pray for every day that God has given us here."
It was a chord that struck with Ma'ayan, 25, (like many here she would not giver her last name), who came to Gadid as a two-year-old and more than anything is lamenting the break-up of the community she calls "one big family." In particular, she is angry at the government for what she says is shoddy treatment.
"These people here, these are the best people in the whole country and they're taking our dignity from us. We never did anything to them and they're treating us like dogs."
In Nisanit, the largest north Gaza town with 300 families, the picture was markedly different. Many of the homes are now empty and cartons and trash overflowed onto the street. In some cases residents have taken everything, including the tiles from the roofs and the glass panes from the windows, leaving only the empty shells of their homes. Still, more than 100 people returned Friday night to hold one last communal dinner.
Earlier Friday, crowds engulfed the main synagogue in Neveh Dekalim, spilling onto the streets. The men's section pressed close to the synagogue while the women formed a ring behind them.
The crowd lingered late into the night, their prayers broken regularly by bouts of dancing and singing.
"This is beautiful, so beautiful, that we can all be here. It is such a special Shabbat feeling," said Chana, a Jerusalem resident who made her way into Neveh Dekalim last week. "This is so important. And I have met some of the most beautiful people of my life here."
While most of the young activists went to sleep shortly after midnight in order to wake up for the morning prayers, some stayed awake for the sunrise, their dancing setting a festive mood.
After the Artzieli circumcision, the crowd in the synagogue broke out into a chorus of singing after his name, honoring the Beit-Ha Migdash and the comfort that God provides, was announced.
The baby was then carried out by his father and the throngs of residents and visitors congratulated them before heading down to a town-wide Kiddush where white and orange were on broad display.
Among the speakers who addressed the crowd at the end of the Kiddush was former chief Rabbi Lau **look up name on internet** . Settler leader Chanan Porat handed the Rabbi of Neve Dekalim a bottle of liquor as an investment towards the "celebration dinner." After he finished speaking the crowd chanted a prayer: "God have mercy on us."
Sitting in her half-packed home, still hoping for a miracle, one Neveh Dekalim resident said, "there were a lot of tears spilled this Shabbat."
"Throughout history, Jews who have been in worse situations than us have celebrated in happiness," Rabbi Adaya said.
And for one last Shabbat, at least, Gush Katif did the same.
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The Jerusalem Post
By Rafael D. Frankel, Sheera Claire Frenkel and Tovah Lazaroff
NEVEH DEKALIM - Surrounded by a sea of men in white shirts and prayer shawls, Levanon Menachem Artzieli was introduced to the world Saturday morning in the central Syangogue amidst a crowd which overflowed into the central square and broke out into loud singing upon the announcement of his name.
Though the settlers remain defiant, vowing that the Jewish community will flourish here for years to come, Artzieli's will likely be the last circumsion in Gush Katif.
Throughout the largest settlement block in Gaza, community dinners, services and celebrations were held to commemorate Shabbat even as many residents insisted this would be far from the last time they would all gather together in the towns they built from sand dunes more than 20 years ago.
With the population of Neveh Dekalim now double what it was just one week ago, it does not look like a town which is about to be emptied and razed.
Thousands of youths who made it past the Kissufim roadblock during the week filled the streets throughout the Shabbat weekend.
"This is a Shabbat like any other, the only special thing is that it's a greater mitzvah, we have all these extra guests," said Eva Gadit, who was expecting more than a dozen people at her table. "We will talk and eat as we always have. I don't think we will need to talk about the disengagement, we don't like politics at the Shabbat table and there is enough talk about that already."
In the Gadit kitchen, pots crowded the countertop and ziplock bags filled with salads toppled out of the fridge every time it was opened. A plastic laundry bucket, overflowing with couscous sat at the foot of the table, too heavy to be lifted up.
Anti-Disengagement activists from around the country donated hundreds of pounds of food to feed the thousands of newly arrived Shabbat guests.
Like many other homes, conversation skirted the topic of the disengagement in favor of the "celebration dinner," an event the settlers here plan to hold when, "the miracle occurs and the soldiers leave and we keep our homes," Gadit said.
Some residents said they may have preferred to spend this Shabbat alone with their families. "But when [our friends] called and said they wanted to be here with us, we couldn't refuse," said Yafa Dahan, 45, an 18-year Neveh Dekalim resident.
"I hope this isn't the last time I'm cooking Shabbat dinner here," she said in tears at her dining room table before walking back to the kitchen, her cooking a distraction from the thoughts she tries to avoid.
In the home of one family of five, all seven of the guests went around the table telling tales of how they arrived in the last few days. A 22-year-old from Bnei Barak said she came in with a forged identity card pretending to be a married woman. Another young man, on leave from the army, said he donned his uniform and convinced the guards that he was serving in the area. An activist from the United States sneaked in on a food truck. He said he had recently been engaged and was hoping to hold the wedding in Neveh Dekalim in the fall.
In the adjacent settlement Gadid, the mood was markedly different as the town's 50 families ate dinner in the central square without the flocks of youths who have made Neveh Dekalim feel at times like a summer camp.
Unlike it's larger sister town, the majority of Gadid residents have begun packing and have generally accepted that in less than a week's time, they will be compelled to leave their 23-year-old community, never to return.
"It's impossible to know the plan God has for us," the Rabbi Yigal Adaya of Gadid said after the meal. "But in the end, we know whatever he does will be better for us."
In addition to praying for a change of heart from the government, Adaya told his community to "pray for every day that God has given us here."
It was a chord that struck with Ma'ayan, 25, (like many here she would not giver her last name), who came to Gadid as a two-year-old and more than anything is lamenting the break-up of the community she calls "one big family." In particular, she is angry at the government for what she says is shoddy treatment.
"These people here, these are the best people in the whole country and they're taking our dignity from us. We never did anything to them and they're treating us like dogs."
In Nisanit, the largest north Gaza town with 300 families, the picture was markedly different. Many of the homes are now empty and cartons and trash overflowed onto the street. In some cases residents have taken everything, including the tiles from the roofs and the glass panes from the windows, leaving only the empty shells of their homes. Still, more than 100 people returned Friday night to hold one last communal dinner.
Earlier Friday, crowds engulfed the main synagogue in Neveh Dekalim, spilling onto the streets. The men's section pressed close to the synagogue while the women formed a ring behind them.
The crowd lingered late into the night, their prayers broken regularly by bouts of dancing and singing.
"This is beautiful, so beautiful, that we can all be here. It is such a special Shabbat feeling," said Chana, a Jerusalem resident who made her way into Neveh Dekalim last week. "This is so important. And I have met some of the most beautiful people of my life here."
While most of the young activists went to sleep shortly after midnight in order to wake up for the morning prayers, some stayed awake for the sunrise, their dancing setting a festive mood.
After the Artzieli circumcision, the crowd in the synagogue broke out into a chorus of singing after his name, honoring the Beit-Ha Migdash and the comfort that God provides, was announced.
The baby was then carried out by his father and the throngs of residents and visitors congratulated them before heading down to a town-wide Kiddush where white and orange were on broad display.
Among the speakers who addressed the crowd at the end of the Kiddush was former chief Rabbi Lau **look up name on internet** . Settler leader Chanan Porat handed the Rabbi of Neve Dekalim a bottle of liquor as an investment towards the "celebration dinner." After he finished speaking the crowd chanted a prayer: "God have mercy on us."
Sitting in her half-packed home, still hoping for a miracle, one Neveh Dekalim resident said, "there were a lot of tears spilled this Shabbat."
"Throughout history, Jews who have been in worse situations than us have celebrated in happiness," Rabbi Adaya said.
And for one last Shabbat, at least, Gush Katif did the same.
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The Jerusalem Post
Friday, August 12, 2005
Protestors flow into Gaza despite closure
By Rafael D. Frankel
NEVE DEKALIM, The Gaza Strip—At least 2,000 people opposed to the Gaza withdrawal, many of them teenagers, have made it into the Gush Katif settlement area despite the military closure of the Gaza Strip, Israeli police said Thursday.
This town in particular, the largest of the Jewish settlements in Gaza, was awash today in a sea of orange t-shirts, ribbons, hats, and even neck ties. Orange is the chosen color of the anti-disengagement movement.
Among the protestors was a group from New York who put their lives at home on hold in order to show their solidarity with the Jewish settlers who are just days away from being forcibly removed from their homes after living here as long as 30 years.
"I came here to identify with them, to be here in the land God gave us," said Nada Klein, 39, from Brooklyn, who left her husband and kids at home. Along with her friends, she came to Gaza with a sleeping bag, a tent, and canned food, yet still said "it would be worse if I had stayed home when my brothers and sisters are struggling."
For her friend, Linda Allen, 51, from Long Island, the message was also one of solidarity in the face of terrorism, and a belief that the disengagement will bring anything but peace.
"They are doing something that is self-destructive, that rewards terror, and will jeopardize all of us around the world," said Allen, an economics professor at Baruch CUNY. "We're all residents of Gush Katif now. In New York, watching the towers fall, in London and Madrid with the subways, all over the world. Until we stand up and fight terror together, we'll never win."
But by far the majority of the protestors who infiltrated Gaza illegally were teenagers.
They came without their parents, hitching rides and using every peaceful tactic available to them to get here. They also were the beneficiaries of apparently lax security by the Israeli Army, which is under orders not to let anyone into Gaza who is not a resident, a journalist, or essential services provider.
Uriel Cohen, 18, from Jerusalem, said he simply hitched a ride from a Neve Dekalim resident. When their car was stopped at the Kissumfim check point, the soldier checked the driver's ID card but not his own.
Most of the teenagers have not arranged places to sleep, and many came with very little money. Nevertheless, the residents here are welcoming their allies, old and young alike, with open arms.
"It's only too bad they didn't come earlier," said David Cohen, handing a piece of pizza to one of the young protestors from behind the window of the Neve Pizza shop where he has worked for the last three years. Still, Cohen said he wouldn't bring any protestors in himself "because I don't want there to be a war here."
In order to stave off any possible violence from the newcomers—a situation the Gush Katif residents all say they will not abide—Ami Sheked, the head of security for all of Gush Katif, and a 19-year resident, addressed the newcomers at sunset in the center square here.
"We don't want any fighting here, just love," he said to a round of applause.
"It won't be a war," Sheked told The Daily News later, an M-16 slung over his back, "but it won't be a walk in the park either."
Mordechai Zeller, 25, originally from California but who now lives in Israel, also infiltrated Gaza illegally Thursday with his girlfriend.
But rather than protest, they came to comfort those who will soon be leaving.
"Even if it's the right thing to do it hurts," said Zeller, who is a religious Jew. "I love my brothers and I want to be with them now."
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The New York Daily News
NEVE DEKALIM, The Gaza Strip—At least 2,000 people opposed to the Gaza withdrawal, many of them teenagers, have made it into the Gush Katif settlement area despite the military closure of the Gaza Strip, Israeli police said Thursday.
This town in particular, the largest of the Jewish settlements in Gaza, was awash today in a sea of orange t-shirts, ribbons, hats, and even neck ties. Orange is the chosen color of the anti-disengagement movement.
Among the protestors was a group from New York who put their lives at home on hold in order to show their solidarity with the Jewish settlers who are just days away from being forcibly removed from their homes after living here as long as 30 years.
"I came here to identify with them, to be here in the land God gave us," said Nada Klein, 39, from Brooklyn, who left her husband and kids at home. Along with her friends, she came to Gaza with a sleeping bag, a tent, and canned food, yet still said "it would be worse if I had stayed home when my brothers and sisters are struggling."
For her friend, Linda Allen, 51, from Long Island, the message was also one of solidarity in the face of terrorism, and a belief that the disengagement will bring anything but peace.
"They are doing something that is self-destructive, that rewards terror, and will jeopardize all of us around the world," said Allen, an economics professor at Baruch CUNY. "We're all residents of Gush Katif now. In New York, watching the towers fall, in London and Madrid with the subways, all over the world. Until we stand up and fight terror together, we'll never win."
But by far the majority of the protestors who infiltrated Gaza illegally were teenagers.
They came without their parents, hitching rides and using every peaceful tactic available to them to get here. They also were the beneficiaries of apparently lax security by the Israeli Army, which is under orders not to let anyone into Gaza who is not a resident, a journalist, or essential services provider.
Uriel Cohen, 18, from Jerusalem, said he simply hitched a ride from a Neve Dekalim resident. When their car was stopped at the Kissumfim check point, the soldier checked the driver's ID card but not his own.
Most of the teenagers have not arranged places to sleep, and many came with very little money. Nevertheless, the residents here are welcoming their allies, old and young alike, with open arms.
"It's only too bad they didn't come earlier," said David Cohen, handing a piece of pizza to one of the young protestors from behind the window of the Neve Pizza shop where he has worked for the last three years. Still, Cohen said he wouldn't bring any protestors in himself "because I don't want there to be a war here."
In order to stave off any possible violence from the newcomers—a situation the Gush Katif residents all say they will not abide—Ami Sheked, the head of security for all of Gush Katif, and a 19-year resident, addressed the newcomers at sunset in the center square here.
"We don't want any fighting here, just love," he said to a round of applause.
"It won't be a war," Sheked told The Daily News later, an M-16 slung over his back, "but it won't be a walk in the park either."
Mordechai Zeller, 25, originally from California but who now lives in Israel, also infiltrated Gaza illegally Thursday with his girlfriend.
But rather than protest, they came to comfort those who will soon be leaving.
"Even if it's the right thing to do it hurts," said Zeller, who is a religious Jew. "I love my brothers and I want to be with them now."
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The New York Daily News
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Gaza ghost town
By Rafael D. Frankel
NISANIT, The Gaza Strip—The mini market here is closed, its shelves stacked on the sidewalk next to one of its freezers. Garbage lines the streets, as well as the yards of the Mediterranean-style villas. And most of the villas themselves are baron of life—some even stripped of the shingles off their roofs, the tiles off their floors, and the marble off their kitchen counters.
The only thing that differentiates Nisanit, a small Jewish settlement in the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, from a ghost town is its few remaining residents—men mostly—who are packing up their homes. They have sent their wives and children out already, not wanting them to see the sorry state their town has deteriorated to ahead of its pending evacuation and demolition.
Moti Tenaim, 46, sits in a plastic chair in the nearly empty living room of his best friend's house he is helping to pack up. His hands behind his head, he stares out at the block they lived on together for nearly 20 years.
Tenaim's wife and four children—three of which were born here—have already moved to Nitzan, a community of prefabricated homes 17 miles north where some of the Nisanit families will go in the short-term.
"My family left when our house was still whole. I wanted them to remember it like that," he says.
In the late afternoon, children would usually be playing in the streets, he said. Instead the only sounds come from a moving truck hauling away a load of furniture.
A few blocks over, Arik Pilus picks through the remains of his house.
After he took his family and most of his belongings last night to Ashkelon, an Israeli city up the coast where he will now live, looters picked through what was left in his home. They stole ceiling lights, cabinets, and even the kitchen sink. Such acts were unthinkable here just days ago, when the community of 370 families was intact, he said.
Now he loads his car with a few last things, taking out a Qassam rocket—a popular weapon of Palestinian militant groups in Gaza—which landed next to his house during the last intifada. "It's my memory from here," he said.
Walking past a bus stop where one of the fiberglass walls is laying shattered on the sidewalk, Veldad David, 23, who lived here since he was 12, said the community "is socially falling apart."
"We're waiting for a miracle," David said, as a public bus—still making all the stops—let off one teenage girl who had tied an orange ribbon (a symbol of the anti-disengagement movement) on her purse.
Back at his friend's house, Tenaim stands on the front porch. Hovering over the uprooted remains of a garden, he takes a deep breath and looks to the sea just a few miles to the West.
The low sun, gentle breeze of sea air, and the sand dunes would make Nisanit feel like a state park off Highway One in northern California if it weren't for the barbed wire fence and army posts surrounding the town.
"What did we fight the wars for?" Tenaim asks, gesturing at what is left of his town.
But the empty houses cannot answer him, and even they will soon be gone.
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The New York Daily News
NISANIT, The Gaza Strip—The mini market here is closed, its shelves stacked on the sidewalk next to one of its freezers. Garbage lines the streets, as well as the yards of the Mediterranean-style villas. And most of the villas themselves are baron of life—some even stripped of the shingles off their roofs, the tiles off their floors, and the marble off their kitchen counters.
The only thing that differentiates Nisanit, a small Jewish settlement in the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, from a ghost town is its few remaining residents—men mostly—who are packing up their homes. They have sent their wives and children out already, not wanting them to see the sorry state their town has deteriorated to ahead of its pending evacuation and demolition.
Moti Tenaim, 46, sits in a plastic chair in the nearly empty living room of his best friend's house he is helping to pack up. His hands behind his head, he stares out at the block they lived on together for nearly 20 years.
Tenaim's wife and four children—three of which were born here—have already moved to Nitzan, a community of prefabricated homes 17 miles north where some of the Nisanit families will go in the short-term.
"My family left when our house was still whole. I wanted them to remember it like that," he says.
In the late afternoon, children would usually be playing in the streets, he said. Instead the only sounds come from a moving truck hauling away a load of furniture.
A few blocks over, Arik Pilus picks through the remains of his house.
After he took his family and most of his belongings last night to Ashkelon, an Israeli city up the coast where he will now live, looters picked through what was left in his home. They stole ceiling lights, cabinets, and even the kitchen sink. Such acts were unthinkable here just days ago, when the community of 370 families was intact, he said.
Now he loads his car with a few last things, taking out a Qassam rocket—a popular weapon of Palestinian militant groups in Gaza—which landed next to his house during the last intifada. "It's my memory from here," he said.
Walking past a bus stop where one of the fiberglass walls is laying shattered on the sidewalk, Veldad David, 23, who lived here since he was 12, said the community "is socially falling apart."
"We're waiting for a miracle," David said, as a public bus—still making all the stops—let off one teenage girl who had tied an orange ribbon (a symbol of the anti-disengagement movement) on her purse.
Back at his friend's house, Tenaim stands on the front porch. Hovering over the uprooted remains of a garden, he takes a deep breath and looks to the sea just a few miles to the West.
The low sun, gentle breeze of sea air, and the sand dunes would make Nisanit feel like a state park off Highway One in northern California if it weren't for the barbed wire fence and army posts surrounding the town.
"What did we fight the wars for?" Tenaim asks, gesturing at what is left of his town.
But the empty houses cannot answer him, and even they will soon be gone.
©2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The New York Daily News
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Israel goes hi-tech for Gaza disengagement
By Rafael D. Frankel
Inside, under artificial light and in climate controlled rooms, away from the fields of Gaza and the dusty plains of the Negev desert where police and army units have been training for their doleful task of removing Israeli Jews from their homes, teams of police now sit making the last preparations for some of the most important work of the Gaza Disengagement.
When August 15 arrives, and the police officers begin the physical evacuation of Gaza, their superiors will be sitting at two command centers, one in Aein HaShlosha, the other in the National Police Headquarters in Jerusalem. From there they will watch, listen to, and coordinate the entire disengagement from afar with the help of some of the most advanced technology ever employed by security forces around the world.
And when the disengagement is complete, when the Jewish residents are gone and their homes bull-dozed from the beach-side towns they built, it will then be technology which the Israeli Defense Forces depend upon to keep Gaza secure.
“The disengagement required intense preparation, and presented us with a big technological challenge,” said Commander Ariel Friedman, the head of technology for the Israeli Police.
In developing the relatively cheap $1.25 million system that will coordinate the disengagement, Friedman said the police had to work under four basic premises: that there was no agreement with the Palestinians on how to proceed, that attacks on Israelis would continue during the pull-out, that there would be large anti-disengagement demonstrations by Israeli opposed to the plan, and that many of the Jews in Gaza would refuse to leave their homes.
Under these assumptions, the police developed a system which allows commanders to trace more than 13 million “reactions” every day. Tasks as mundane as a printer cartridge being changed at one of their command centers, to vastly more important information like which people have been evacuated from their homes will all be tracked, and that information available to the commanders with the click of a mouse.
“Everything is computerized,” said ?rank? Ofer Shenhov, the head of the police computerized operations section.
Most important to the disengagement, the computer system will allow commanders to supervise exactly how the disengagement is proceeding in “real time.” Using information radioed in by police and soldiers on the ground, GIS tracking from their vehicles, and aerial and ground based cameras, the system will provide a complete picture to police at the command centers of nearly every aspect of the Gaza withdrawal.
The systems will be aided in large part by an investment in new hardware by the police that was accelerated in the run-up to the evacuation. In the last 4 months, Freidman said, the police have increased the amount of their patrol cars equipped with advanced computer and GIS technology by 35 percent—most of those being vehicles assigned to the Gaza area.
Not only will they be able to track the location of people, vehicles, and goods, but thanks to a database that was painstakingly constructed over the last few months in tandem with the computer systems, the police will be able to access comprehensive information about the people and homes they are evacuating.
On a display screen in the police headquarters in Jerusalem, Shenhov scrolls through details such as how many family members live in one house in the town Gadid, if they have any pets, if they have registered weapons, and if they have any special needs.
“It’s very important to know about our citizens,” Friedman said, “we want to give them special treatment.”
Developers of the system also included a range of visual aids that feed off the real time data, and are accessible as such. Charts and graphs will display the status of the withdrawal in each town in terms of how many people have been evacuated, what goods have been moved, which structures have been demolished in up to the minute, daily, and aggregate displays. One chart will also track how many people were arrested resisting evacuation.
Once the evacuation is complete, the army will assume total control of the Gaza border, and will rely both on advanced technology and physical deterrence for keeping Gazans out of Israel. The IDF is currently constructing a barrier network between Gaza and Israel—built entirely in Israeli territory, according to a military source with advanced knowledge of the network—which consists of a barbed wire fence, an sensor-laden fence, a tracking road, a 75 to 150-meter-wide agriculture zone, another barbed wire fence, and a buffer zone 1-2 kilometers wide.
The $225 million network will employ a range of cameras, manned and possibly unmanned patrol vehicles, and sensory technology all tied into “a few” command and control centers around Gaza, the military source said. “We are trying to establish a system… that will buy us time in case of a terrorist infiltration and that would allow us to act better with our forces,” he said.
While he would not get into the specific technology the IDF will use, the source said it would be very similar to other borders they have constructed.
Robin Hughes, the Middle East Editor for Jane's Defense Weekly, and an expert in electronic warfare, said that implies similar surveillance technology to that being used on the Lebanese border, which the IDF refers to as a “Total Area Control System.”
That system, Hughes said, includes long-range mounted and mobile infrared cameras, aerial photography from drone aircraft and balloons, thermal imaging, motion detectors, and acoustic sensors—all of which feed into command and control (C2) centers. Any anomaly scanned at the C2s can then be radioed to the closest patrol team on the ground for investigation.
Military contractors have also developed computer systems for the IDF which compare and contrast digital photos taken by the assortment of cameras in order to analyze if a picture has changed over the course of anywhere from a minute to a few days, Hughes said.
The IDF is also testing both unmanned patrol vehicles and autonomous guns posted on towers that can both be controlled from C2 centers.
Meanwhile, any and all information fed into the C2 centers—which are each responsible for a strip of the border—can be fed into larger C4 centers, which are higher up the command chain in the total surveillance and border control system developed by the IDF called Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I). “That is the essence of controlling borders,” Hughes said.
While the purpose of C4I is largely to prevent any infiltration, it can also be employed for offensive operations, such as the “targeted killings” the IDF has often used on senior figures in Palestinian militant organizations. In those circumstances, Hughes said, the IDF can also use aircraft such as the Gulfstream 5 or Hercules EC-130 (both electronic warfare planes) to listen in on cellular communications. In tandem with the visual imagery, the listening devices allow the IDF to pinpoint the exact location and status of their target and use the information for pinpoint killings.
Another advantage of the system, the military source said, was personnel resources it saves the IDF. “Thankfully, technology allows us to reduce the number of people that are needed to [secure the border]. You’re looking at a few dozen [soldiers] at each center,” he said.
With just a few C2 centers around Gaza, that means less than 50 soldiers at any given time will be responsible for utilizing technology capable of watching and containing nearly 1.4 million Palestinians.
**
Side Bar
During recent protests by Israelis opposed to the withdrawal from Gaza, many of the rally organizers claim that the surveillance technology nominally used to monitor Arab militants was turned on them.
Protestors say unmanned cameras mounted on towers, blimps, and drone aircraft were used to photograph them, that their mobile phones were bugged and/or rendered inoperative, and that their leaders were followed by the Shin Bet secret service.
“The surveillance they’ve been using is shocking,” said Aliza Herbst, who assisted in coordinating the march on Kfar Maimon. “They have a lot of info that would be difficult to understand how they have it without eves dropping.”
A police spokesman denied the wide-spread use of phone tapping and the claim that they interfered with the cellular network. “There was a crash of the [cellular] network because there was such a huge use of the network,” Lt. Col. Avi Zelba said. (That claim was confirmed by a spokesman for Cellcom.) Additionally, there was “absolutely no” phone tapping “unless there was an order from the court.”
However Zelba did not dispute the photography. “I don’t want to get especially into this question. But the police sometimes have to collect evidence all around and there is a lot of things you have to know,” he said.
While the tactics used by the police to prevent the marchers from gaining entrance into the Gaza Strip were strong, the surveillance did not constitute a breach of Israeli Civil Rights law, said the Israel Association for Civil Rights Spokesman Yoav Loeff.
“There is no [legal] limit on aerial photography by the government,” Loeff said, adding that as long as permission was obtained from the courts, wire taps were also legal. The only “red line” that was crossed by the government, he said, was stopping busses on the way to the protest. That was “over acting ahead in order to prevent some basic crimes… much later on, and we see that as problematic.”
Whether legal or not, the use of surveillance technology on the protestors brought out heated condemnation from those who saw an equivalency being made by the government between the anti-disengagement protestors and Arab militants.
“The fact that they use police and military forces with technological solutions like listening to the phones, taking pictures, photos—it’s like they are dealing with the biggest criminals in Israel, and like they are dealing with terrorists in the same way,” said MK Uri Ariel, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Security committee.
“They are not enemies, they are not terrorists, they are just people who want to demonstrate in a peaceful way, and this is not democratic,” he said.
--R.F.
©2005 The Media Line
Inside, under artificial light and in climate controlled rooms, away from the fields of Gaza and the dusty plains of the Negev desert where police and army units have been training for their doleful task of removing Israeli Jews from their homes, teams of police now sit making the last preparations for some of the most important work of the Gaza Disengagement.
When August 15 arrives, and the police officers begin the physical evacuation of Gaza, their superiors will be sitting at two command centers, one in Aein HaShlosha, the other in the National Police Headquarters in Jerusalem. From there they will watch, listen to, and coordinate the entire disengagement from afar with the help of some of the most advanced technology ever employed by security forces around the world.
And when the disengagement is complete, when the Jewish residents are gone and their homes bull-dozed from the beach-side towns they built, it will then be technology which the Israeli Defense Forces depend upon to keep Gaza secure.
“The disengagement required intense preparation, and presented us with a big technological challenge,” said Commander Ariel Friedman, the head of technology for the Israeli Police.
In developing the relatively cheap $1.25 million system that will coordinate the disengagement, Friedman said the police had to work under four basic premises: that there was no agreement with the Palestinians on how to proceed, that attacks on Israelis would continue during the pull-out, that there would be large anti-disengagement demonstrations by Israeli opposed to the plan, and that many of the Jews in Gaza would refuse to leave their homes.
Under these assumptions, the police developed a system which allows commanders to trace more than 13 million “reactions” every day. Tasks as mundane as a printer cartridge being changed at one of their command centers, to vastly more important information like which people have been evacuated from their homes will all be tracked, and that information available to the commanders with the click of a mouse.
“Everything is computerized,” said ?rank? Ofer Shenhov, the head of the police computerized operations section.
Most important to the disengagement, the computer system will allow commanders to supervise exactly how the disengagement is proceeding in “real time.” Using information radioed in by police and soldiers on the ground, GIS tracking from their vehicles, and aerial and ground based cameras, the system will provide a complete picture to police at the command centers of nearly every aspect of the Gaza withdrawal.
The systems will be aided in large part by an investment in new hardware by the police that was accelerated in the run-up to the evacuation. In the last 4 months, Freidman said, the police have increased the amount of their patrol cars equipped with advanced computer and GIS technology by 35 percent—most of those being vehicles assigned to the Gaza area.
Not only will they be able to track the location of people, vehicles, and goods, but thanks to a database that was painstakingly constructed over the last few months in tandem with the computer systems, the police will be able to access comprehensive information about the people and homes they are evacuating.
On a display screen in the police headquarters in Jerusalem, Shenhov scrolls through details such as how many family members live in one house in the town Gadid, if they have any pets, if they have registered weapons, and if they have any special needs.
“It’s very important to know about our citizens,” Friedman said, “we want to give them special treatment.”
Developers of the system also included a range of visual aids that feed off the real time data, and are accessible as such. Charts and graphs will display the status of the withdrawal in each town in terms of how many people have been evacuated, what goods have been moved, which structures have been demolished in up to the minute, daily, and aggregate displays. One chart will also track how many people were arrested resisting evacuation.
Once the evacuation is complete, the army will assume total control of the Gaza border, and will rely both on advanced technology and physical deterrence for keeping Gazans out of Israel. The IDF is currently constructing a barrier network between Gaza and Israel—built entirely in Israeli territory, according to a military source with advanced knowledge of the network—which consists of a barbed wire fence, an sensor-laden fence, a tracking road, a 75 to 150-meter-wide agriculture zone, another barbed wire fence, and a buffer zone 1-2 kilometers wide.
The $225 million network will employ a range of cameras, manned and possibly unmanned patrol vehicles, and sensory technology all tied into “a few” command and control centers around Gaza, the military source said. “We are trying to establish a system… that will buy us time in case of a terrorist infiltration and that would allow us to act better with our forces,” he said.
While he would not get into the specific technology the IDF will use, the source said it would be very similar to other borders they have constructed.
Robin Hughes, the Middle East Editor for Jane's Defense Weekly, and an expert in electronic warfare, said that implies similar surveillance technology to that being used on the Lebanese border, which the IDF refers to as a “Total Area Control System.”
That system, Hughes said, includes long-range mounted and mobile infrared cameras, aerial photography from drone aircraft and balloons, thermal imaging, motion detectors, and acoustic sensors—all of which feed into command and control (C2) centers. Any anomaly scanned at the C2s can then be radioed to the closest patrol team on the ground for investigation.
Military contractors have also developed computer systems for the IDF which compare and contrast digital photos taken by the assortment of cameras in order to analyze if a picture has changed over the course of anywhere from a minute to a few days, Hughes said.
The IDF is also testing both unmanned patrol vehicles and autonomous guns posted on towers that can both be controlled from C2 centers.
Meanwhile, any and all information fed into the C2 centers—which are each responsible for a strip of the border—can be fed into larger C4 centers, which are higher up the command chain in the total surveillance and border control system developed by the IDF called Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I). “That is the essence of controlling borders,” Hughes said.
While the purpose of C4I is largely to prevent any infiltration, it can also be employed for offensive operations, such as the “targeted killings” the IDF has often used on senior figures in Palestinian militant organizations. In those circumstances, Hughes said, the IDF can also use aircraft such as the Gulfstream 5 or Hercules EC-130 (both electronic warfare planes) to listen in on cellular communications. In tandem with the visual imagery, the listening devices allow the IDF to pinpoint the exact location and status of their target and use the information for pinpoint killings.
Another advantage of the system, the military source said, was personnel resources it saves the IDF. “Thankfully, technology allows us to reduce the number of people that are needed to [secure the border]. You’re looking at a few dozen [soldiers] at each center,” he said.
With just a few C2 centers around Gaza, that means less than 50 soldiers at any given time will be responsible for utilizing technology capable of watching and containing nearly 1.4 million Palestinians.
**
Side Bar
During recent protests by Israelis opposed to the withdrawal from Gaza, many of the rally organizers claim that the surveillance technology nominally used to monitor Arab militants was turned on them.
Protestors say unmanned cameras mounted on towers, blimps, and drone aircraft were used to photograph them, that their mobile phones were bugged and/or rendered inoperative, and that their leaders were followed by the Shin Bet secret service.
“The surveillance they’ve been using is shocking,” said Aliza Herbst, who assisted in coordinating the march on Kfar Maimon. “They have a lot of info that would be difficult to understand how they have it without eves dropping.”
A police spokesman denied the wide-spread use of phone tapping and the claim that they interfered with the cellular network. “There was a crash of the [cellular] network because there was such a huge use of the network,” Lt. Col. Avi Zelba said. (That claim was confirmed by a spokesman for Cellcom.) Additionally, there was “absolutely no” phone tapping “unless there was an order from the court.”
However Zelba did not dispute the photography. “I don’t want to get especially into this question. But the police sometimes have to collect evidence all around and there is a lot of things you have to know,” he said.
While the tactics used by the police to prevent the marchers from gaining entrance into the Gaza Strip were strong, the surveillance did not constitute a breach of Israeli Civil Rights law, said the Israel Association for Civil Rights Spokesman Yoav Loeff.
“There is no [legal] limit on aerial photography by the government,” Loeff said, adding that as long as permission was obtained from the courts, wire taps were also legal. The only “red line” that was crossed by the government, he said, was stopping busses on the way to the protest. That was “over acting ahead in order to prevent some basic crimes… much later on, and we see that as problematic.”
Whether legal or not, the use of surveillance technology on the protestors brought out heated condemnation from those who saw an equivalency being made by the government between the anti-disengagement protestors and Arab militants.
“The fact that they use police and military forces with technological solutions like listening to the phones, taking pictures, photos—it’s like they are dealing with the biggest criminals in Israel, and like they are dealing with terrorists in the same way,” said MK Uri Ariel, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Security committee.
“They are not enemies, they are not terrorists, they are just people who want to demonstrate in a peaceful way, and this is not democratic,” he said.
--R.F.
©2005 The Media Line