GAZA/ISRAEL: SETTLERS, SECURITY AND PALESTINIANS PREPARE FOR ISRAEL'S PULLOUT FROM GAZA.

Record ID: 400786

  • Title: GAZA/ISRAEL: SETTLERS, SECURITY AND PALESTINIANS PREPARE FOR ISRAEL'S PULLOUT FROM GAZA.
  • Date: 14th August 2005
  • Summary: (W3) NETZARIM, GAZA STRIP (AUGUST 14, 2005) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. GV/PAN: EXTERIOR OF HOUSE, FAMILY PACKING 0.08 2. GV: FAMILY'S FURNITURE BEING LOADED ONTO TRUCK; WASHING MACHINE AND REFRIGERATOR BEING PUT ON TRUCK (3 SHOTS) 0.25 3. GV/PAN: EXTERIOR OF HOUSE WITH NAME BOARD OF FAMILY READING: "POICHTONGER FAMILY" 0.30 (W3) ALE
  • Embargoed: 29th August 2005 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NETZARIM, ALEI SINAI SETTLEMENT AND KFAR DARM, GUSH KATIF, GAZA STRIP / KISSUFIM CROSSING, ISRAEL / GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP
  • City:
  • Country: Gaza Israel
  • Reuters ID: LVA9HC3M0CTOURURZR9199KTAQWI
  • Story Text: Settlers, security and Palestinians prepare for
    Israel's pullout from Gaza.



    In a surprise move that undermined declarations of
    militant Jewish settlers in Gaza that they will resist
    Israeli withdrawal plans, the Poichtongers became the first
    family to voluntarily leave Netzarim settlement on Sunday
    (August 14), ahead of a deadline to leave or face forcible
    evacuation.

    The Israeli Army will order all settlers to abandon
    their homes at midnight and anyone still in the settlements
    48 hours later will be forcibly removed by soldiers.

    Netzarim is an isolated settlement north of the main
    Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza and just south of
    sprawling Gaza City and the refugee camps that dot the
    beachside landscape. It is populated mainly by religious
    Jews who consider it a biblical birthright to be there and
    it has been identified as one of the militant settlements
    where residents are likely to resist attempts to evacuate
    them.

    Of all the settlements in Gaza, Netzarim is the one
    that most disrupts normal life for Palestinians as it has
    forced the closure of the main road between Gaza City in
    the north and Gaza's second biggest city Khan Younis in the
    south.

    A journey that once took half an hour can now take
    several hours, forced through back roads to an Israeli
    checkpoint that is regularly closed.

    Protecting Netzarim from Palestinian attacks has been
    an elaborate and expensive affair for Israel - running
    armoured shuttle buses along a heavily fortified road
    across hostile territory to move residents and their
    supplies in and out of the settlement.

    But the Poichtongers were not the only ones departing
    as settlers across the Gaza Strip made final arrangements
    to depart the region.

    Government figures show that more than half of the
    settlers have applied for state compensation, signalling
    they would go quietly.

    In the settlement of Kfar Darom, however, some settlers
    were vowing to stay.

    Residents went about their daily shopping and visited
    local synagogues, many vowing that the August 15 withdrawal
    will do nothing to disrupt their ordinary routines.

    "We believe that this program that (Israeli Prime
    Minister Ariel) Sharon, it is not going to happen. No
    matter what happen we will not leave this place because
    it's our country, you can't give it to our enemies so we
    stay here and fight. We will not fight with our soldiers
    because they are our brothers but we are not going to let
    them take us out," one resident said.

    Cemeteries in the settlements will only be relocated
    some time after residents have left and several mourners
    gathered to say goodbye to loved ones buried there, not
    knowing when they will visit their gravesites again. No
    exact timetable has been set for the cemeteries to be
    disinterred.

    A family of a soldier killed in Netzarim came to honour
    his memory for what they fear will be the last time.

    Soldier Nitzan Cohen was sent to Gaza to defend the settlers from
    P
    alestinian militants in neighbouring towns
    and refugee camps, and was killed in a firefight in 1995.

    His mother, Rivka Cohen, says he was killed along with
    a Palestinian solider, Jamal Swliwat, while on joint
    patrols - which were set up under earlier attempts at
    peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians before a
    violent Palestinian uprising started in 2000 scuppering the
    agreements.

    Cohen filled a plastic container with earth from the
    ground near where her son was killed.

    "We will take this soil, along with some soil we will
    take on our way from the place where Nitzan was killed and
    will put it on Nitzan's grave. This is our way to have them
    always together," she said.

    As a final tribute - Cohen's parents were escorted out
    of Netzarim in a police vehicle - leaving behind the place,
    if not the memories, of where their son had died.

    Thousands of Israeli police blocked approaches into
    Gaza to keep back radical Jewish protesters as the final
    moments to the pullout began to countdown.

    Israel's police force was on its highest alert. Aside
    from some 50,000 Israeli troops and police assigned to
    pullout tasks, a 5,000-strong Palestinian force was to
    deploy near the Jewish enclaves to prevent any attempt by
    militants to fire on settlers to show they were chasing
    them out.

    The "Disengagement Plan" will get rolling at midnight
    (2100 GMT) on Sunday when border crossings to settlements
    will be sealed to ordinary travellers.

    The World Court describes the Israeli settlements as
    illegal. Israel disputes this.

    Palestinians welcome "disengagement" but fear the move
    is a smokescreen to cement Israel's hold on much of the
    West Bank, where 230,000 settlers and 2.4 million
    Palestinians live, and deny them the viable state they
    seek.

    As ordinary Palestinians eagerly awaited the pullout,
    members of the Palestinian Council of Ministers met for
    talks in Gaza City ahead of the historic withdrawal.

    But as ministers met to finalise the plans, the
    militant group Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades held a press
    conference of their own to announce their plans on the eve
    of Israel's first-ever withdrawal from occupied land.

    "The Zionist enemy should understand that the
    resistance is not over and our attacks will not have any
    barriers. THreatening our sites only reassures us to keep
    our weapons and operations," Abu Yousef, spokesman for the
    Al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades said.

    Israel's pullout from Gaza, home to 1.4 Palestinians
    and some 8,500 Jewish settlers, marks the first time in
    decades that Palestinians will be able to control the
    territory.

    Britain ruled Gaza when it controlled Israel and
    surrounding territories under its mandate. Egypt captured
    the territory in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and later lost
    it to Israel, who occupied it along with the West Bank in
    the 1967 Middle East war.


    jg/

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