Israeli soldiers sawed down and pried open doors as they forced their way into a nursery filled with Jewish ultranationalists opposed to the Gaza pull-out on Thursday, dragging parents holding screaming children out of the building.
It was to be his last day in Gaza, but Sagi Ifrach planted himself on the roof of the only home he has ever known yesterday morning and declared that it would take the entire Israeli army to move him. His parents and siblings had left two days earlier, resigned to the futility of resisting Ariel Sharon’s determination to clear Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
Thousands of Israeli troops moved into the Gaza settlements overnight for the start of a historic operation to remove the remaining Jewish families from their homes and transfer the territory to Palestinian control. Earlier, police and soldiers confronted hundreds of militant young Jews in the Neve Dekalim, who tried to prevent families from leaving by the midnight deadline.
At the heavy steel gates to Neve Dekalim, a few voices among the crowd of angry young religious Jews were shouting ”Nazis” and ”Gestapo” at the ranks of Israeli police massing on Monday on the road beyond. The chants disquieted others who favoured singing psalms and heartfelt appeals to Jews not to expel Jews.
Israel sealed off its Gaza settlements on Sunday night as a deadline passed for residents to leave their homes in a historic move that for the first time will see the razing of Jewish settlements on Palestinian territory. A combined force of about 50 000 troops and police is to be deployed over the coming days, in Israel’s largest military operation outside of a war.
Dan Amiel never doubted the inevitable course of history in his patch of the Gaza strip, or his place in the struggle to make it happen. As a rough sign of his intent, he gestures to a painting on the wall of the community hall in Kfar Darom depicting the borders of the ancient state of Israel running deep into what is now Jordan and far into the Egyptian Sinai.
Thousands of right-wing Israelis rallied near the Gaza Strip border on Tuesday night ahead of a threatened showdown with the army and police over the government’s plan to remove all Jewish settlers from Gaza and bulldoze their homes later this month.
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.
Israeli troops killed at least nine Palestinians in Rafah on Thursday as the Israeli army widened it offensive on the southern Gaza Strip town to two new neighbourhoods, defying fierce international criticism. Initial eyewitnesses accounts said two died when an Israeli tank fired on Palestinians coming out of a graveyard.
No image available
/ 4 February 2004
Maayan Yaday and her husband were hauling the packing cases into their new home as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his intention to clear them and all the other Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip. On Tuesday, Yaday predicted she would be living in the Gaza settlement of Nezer Hazani long after Sharon was replaced.