Police arrested 250 anti-disengagement protesters as a mass demonstration in Kefar Maymon came to an end on Thursday having failed to reach the Gaza Strip settlements.
The protesters were arrested after slipping away from the main demonstration and trying to get past army lines into the settlements, which the government closed to non-residents last week.
Almost all of the 10 000 demonstrators returned home on Thursday, leaving around 200 people in Kefar Maymon. The police and army also returned to bases, leaving only a small number.
Although the demonstrators, who were protesting against Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw from Gaza and four West Bank colonies, failed to reach the entry point to the Gaza settlements, they succeeded in paralysing the police.
Israel’s police force is relatively small, and officers had to be called from other duties to cover the three-day demonstration.
Benzi Lieberman, the head of the settlers’ council which organised the event, told protesters that instead of trying to get to the settlements en masse they should go in small groups.
”We will get there bit by bit, and in two weeks’ time we’ll have another 10 000 people in Gush Katif,” he said. Lieberman also urged some protesters to remain in Kefar Maymon to force the police to remain with them. One of the strategies of the protests is to wear down the security forces through civil disobedience.
Seventy of the 250 arrested protesters were released on Thursday, while 180 remained in detention after refusing to give their names and addresses.
The demands of policing the protest prompted Ehud Olmert, the deputy prime minister, to suggest that the evacuation should begin before its August 15 scheduled start.
”This confrontation saps a great deal of energy, disrupts the lives of all of the country’s residents, doesn’t lead to any advantage,” he told Israeli radio. ”So I would definitely weigh an earlier withdrawal favourably.”
Meanwhile, Brigadier General Uzi Moscovich told reporters that the army would dynamite around 20 synagogues and public buildings.
”We will bring the … explosives and blow them up. This is for practical and symbolic reasons,” he said.
Army rabbis had not objected to the plan, he added. But other officials said no decision had been taken on whether buildings in the settlements would be destroyed or handed over to the Palestinians. – Guardian Unlimited Â