Ariel Sharon widened the breach with his former allies among the settler leaders on Sunday on Sunday by accusing them of causing unnecessary suffering for political gain during the Gaza Strip pullout.
The prime minister’s attack — condemning leaders’ calls for settlers to reject the housing offered by the government and instead stay in tents — came as forces moved into some of the last of the Gaza settlements still to be cleared, meeting with protest but little physical resistance.
By nightfall, there were residents only in Netzarim, one of the 21 Israeli colonies in Gaza.
On Wednesday, the security forces are expected to begin clearing settlements marked for demolition in the northern West Bank. Residents have already left two West Bank communities but two others, Sa Nur and Homesh, have attracted hundreds of militant settlers expected by the army to be ”very difficult”.
The military also began razing houses in four of the emptied settlements ahead of the settlements’ handover to the Palestinian Authority in the coming weeks.
Sharon told his Cabinet on Sunday that the settler leadership, known as the Yesha council, was harming removed settlers. In an attempt to portray the evacuated people as refugees, the council was encouraging them to move to tent camps. ”I call on the evacuees not to listen to incitement, not to pay attention to plans for establishing tent encampments, which is a political act, and there are those who are prepared to cause people to suffer to carry out their political plans,” he said.
Sharon also implicitly blamed Yesha leaders as he condemned the young ultra-nationalists who fought with the police and army during the Gaza pullout, most notably from the roof of Kfar Darom synagogue. ”Some of their actions could be defined as acts of hooliganism that bordered on the criminal. This reflects not only on them but on those who dispatched them, incited them and handled them.”
During clear-outs of settlements on Sunday resisters burned barricades and there was a mock cemetery for ”anyone who expels Jews from their homes”. It contained four graves with names on, including Hitler’s, and a fifth grave as yet unmarked.
Israeli forces who arrived outside the home of the Hatual family, in Katif, were confronted with five chairs each marked with the name of a family member killed in Palestinian attacks, including four children aged two years to 11. In Atzmona, one family wore the yellow stars of David, reminiscent of the badges the Nazis forced Jews to wear.
”Our feeling is like this is the start of a holocaust,” Ruthie Harush, a mother of seven, told Reuters. ”Didn’t the Holocaust begin with Hitler saying he was a democratic leader and soldiers saying they only carried out orders?”
Israel’s Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, said that with almost all the settlers gone, the Gaza Strip will be handed over to the Palestinian Authority within six weeks. There were still some issues to be resolved before the transfer, including a protocol for deploying Palestinian forces along Gaza’s border with Egypt and agreements on crossing points.
Sharon’s office revealed that he intends to use his address to the opening of the United Nations general assembly in New York next month, and meetings with government heads, to garner international approval for the ”disengagement”. Israel also wants the UN security council to back the move officially.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, at the weekend signed a decree giving the Palestinian Authority control of the land vacated by Israel, and called for a ”great jihad” to rebuild Gaza. The authority, he said, would build homes for 40 000 people at Morag, and Netzarim would be a terminal for a new port. – Guardian Unlimited Â