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Tightened security for the withdrawal
Security Tightens for Gaza Withdrawal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:35 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli authorities set up roadblocks across southern Israel and cut off bus service in the Gaza Strip on Sunday as they began final preparations to begin dismantling all 21 Jewish settlements inside Gaza.
Israeli troops were to seal off the settlements at midnight (5 p.m. EDT), marking the start of the withdrawal, the first time Israel will pull out of settled land Palestinians want for a future state. Two days later, soldiers will begin forcibly removing any remaining settlers.
As of Sunday, thousands of residents were vowing to resist eviction. Other opponents of the pullout have threatened to hold massive demonstrations and to run the roadblock on the Gaza border to create chaos and torpedo the withdrawal.
Police spokesman Avi Zelba said authorities set up a cordon of roadblocks in southern Israel on Sunday to prevent opponents from interfering. Only residents of southern Israel and those with a legitimate reason for being there will be allowed to cross.
Meanwhile, Palestinian security forces, along with several Egyptian officers, began deploying near Jewish settlements in Gaza. By Monday, thousands of Palestinian troops will be deployed near settlements, to prevent militants from reaching the area.
Vice Premier Shimon Peres gave a pep talk to Israeli troops stationed near the Gaza border, telling them their coming task was crucial to protecting democracy.
''The settlements must be evacuated they cannot stay here,'' he told reporters. ''I understand that there are feelings. I have sympathy (for the settlers), but they cannot replace a national choice.''
Resistant settlers also made last-minute preparations, with their leaders issuing instructions on how to break the morale of soldiers sent to carry out eviction orders, according to the Yediot Ahronot daily.
The settlers were told to give children's drawings to the soldiers and to take pictures of troops, telling them that history will remember them for their crimes, the newspaper reported.
Settlers also planned to seal off their communities early Monday to prevent soldiers from delivering eviction notices.
The army closed the checkpoint into the Gush Katif cluster of settlements in southern Gaza to everyone but residents weeks ago, but thousands of protesters managed to infiltrate. The army said Sunday that as many as 4,000 disengagement opponents might be inside the settlements; settlers said the figure was much higher.
''I think that's a sign that a lot of soldiers are also protesting in their way by letting people come in,'' said Anita Tucker, a resident of the Netzer Hazani settlement.
Brig. Gen. Dan Harel, the military commander in charge of the pullout, said the infiltrators would have no impact on the pullout.
''They won't prevent us from carrying out the disengagement at the time, moment and way that we see fit,'' he told Army Radio.
Meanwhile, hundreds of settlers gathered at the Gush Katif cemetery singing traditional prayers of redemption as part of a ceremony commemorating the Tisha B'Av holy day marking the destruction of the Jewish Temples. The cemetery's 49 graves are to be moved as part of the pullout.
''Go to the holy patriarchs, the holy matriarchs, tell them `We want to stay here,''' Rabbi Yosef Elnikaveh said, symbolically addressing the dead at the ceremony. ''Tell them you don't want anyone to touch you. Tell them you don't want them to open your graves, that you want your graves to remain and be opened only upon the resurrection of the dead.''
Another Gaza settler, Yoav Itzhaki, said he and some settlers wanted to establish their own authority in the region, autonomous from Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
''The state of Israel does not have the right to expel the local residents,'' Itzhaki told Army Radio, reading from the group's charter. ''In light of this, we, the residents of the Katif Strip, have decided to stay in our homes and to establish the Jewish Authority of the Gaza Strip.''
Police had expected large crowds Sunday at the Western Wall, the Jewish holy site in Jerusalem, as a sign of protest during the Tisha B'Av fast day. However, the crowds were smaller than feared, possibly because of the August heat.
Israel's Islamic Movement called on Muslims to gather at the adjacent Haram a Sharif, the disputed holy site claimed by both Muslims and Jews, to protect it. Thousands of police were sent to the area to prevent a possible outbreak of violence between Arabs and Jews, police said.
About 55,000 Israeli troops and police are expected to take part in the pullout from the settlements in Gaza and four others in the northern West Bank. Some of the forces will remove the settlers from their homes, others will prevent protesters from interfering; still others will protect troops and settlers from attacks by Palestinian militants trying to create the impression they are driving the Israelis out.
The Israelis and Palestinians also opened a joint-operations center on the Gaza border to help them respond to any violence, Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said. Israel has promised to retaliate harshly if fired on during the pullout.
Israeli and Palestinian commanders held their final security coordination meeting Sunday, exchanging maps of troop placements in preparation for the deployment later Sunday of 7,500 Palestinian troops along the outskirts of the Gaza settlements to deter militant attacks, the Israeli army said.
After Decades of Disapponitment, Gazans are Preparing to Rejoice
After Decades of Disappointment, Gazans Are Preparing to Rejoice
By GREG MYRE
GAZA, Aug. 11 - In this land of poverty, violence and dashed dreams of statehood, the Palestinians are revving up for the rarest of events in the Gaza Strip: a celebration.
The Palestinian Authority is planning rallies as if it were the homestretch of an election campaign. Small sewing factories are cranking out thousands of Palestinian flags and street banners, T-shirts and backpacks that proclaim, "Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem." That message, intended to give Palestinians hope that Gaza first will not be Gaza last, is not exactly what the Israelis want to hear.
Israel's planned evacuation of Jewish settlers and soldiers from the strip, an operation set to begin Monday, has generated at least a small streak of optimism among Gazans. For the first time in decades, for example, they may be able to travel abroad without Israeli permission.
Still, they say, the good cheer is tempered by the false dawns of the past decade and the belief that Israel will continue to wield control over Gaza from the outside.
"I think there was a collective depression that permeated Gaza," said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer raised in Canada who serves as an adviser to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas. "There is a small window of opportunity here, and we're trying to get people excited about what could happen. They're leaving. We're staying. And it's time to rebuild."
The Palestinian Authority is sending workers door to door to prepare families for the withdrawal, though their message makes it sound as though a hurricane is blowing in from the Mediterranean. Families are advised to stock up on food, water and medicine in case the pullout turns turbulent and Israel's security forces impose curfews and closings.
A pamphlet being distributed to every household in Gaza responds to questions like "Will I be able to reach my job in Gaza's industrial zone during the withdrawal?" Answer: "It's not clear."
As Palestinians count down the days until the Israeli departure, many share a wish to stroll the grounds of the 21 Jewish settlements for a close-up look at the single-family houses with red tile roofs and modest gardens.
"I want to go to Gush Katif, in the south," said Ahmed Kazaer, 50. "I hear it is the most beautiful." Mr. Kazaer runs a sewing factory here in Gaza City that is making T-shirts for the withdrawal.
But fulfilling even that simple desire may have to wait two months or more. Israel has set aside a month to evacuate the settlers. After the settlers go, the military will probably need another few weeks to tear down the more than 1,500 homes in the Gaza settlements, a move that the Palestinians have approved. Private American philanthropists are working to put together a consortium to buy some of the Israeli greenhouses still standing and transfer them to Palestinian control.
When the soldiers leave and the Palestinian Authority gains control, its first step will be to send technical teams to survey the settlements and ensure they are safe. The Palestinians have complained of receiving limited information about the settlements and say the survey could also take weeks.
Eventually the authority plans to take Gazans on organized bus tours of what will remain of the settlements, but that is not likely before October, Ms. Buttu said.
Palestinian and Israeli leaders, as well as the security forces, are trying to coordinate to ensure that there will be no Palestinian mortar or rocket fire during the Israeli withdrawal, and no storming and looting of the settlements by Palestinians after the Israelis leave for good.
Israel wants to avoid the perception of withdrawing under fire, while the Palestinian Authority seeks to demonstrate its control over the newly acquired territory. But Gaza is prone to chaos, and celebration could dissolve into anarchy.
Mr. Abbas's Fatah movement, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, the militant Islamic group that has carried out many of the deadliest attacks against Israel, are both claiming credit for the Israeli withdrawal, and they may hold rival events.
Jamal Abu Samhadanah, leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a small armed faction, said the Palestinian Authority should "use all its cars and jeeps to get people to the settlements to celebrate immediately." He added, "These are going to be beautiful moments, and no one is allowed to prevent us from celebrating."
Meanwhile, Gaza's lawlessness is on display almost daily.
Western aid workers have been kidnapped on several occasions recently, though they were soon freed unharmed. The International Committee of the Red Cross suspended field operations this week after one of its offices was sprayed with bullets. And last week assailants set off a bomb in Gaza City outside the home of Zuhair Sourani, the chief justice of the Palestinian courts.
"I don't think I was the target, but this was intended to terrorize the judiciary," Mr. Sourani said.
"Mr. Abbas is a man who wants to uphold the law," the justice said, "but he must show that the Palestinian Authority can fight whoever is breaking the law."
Still, there is a sense of anticipation not felt here in recent years. Ask a Gazan to recall the last time of hope, and he is likely to cite the arrival in 1994 of Yasir Arafat, who initially established the Palestinian Authority in Gaza after more than a quarter-century in exile.
Or perhaps he will recall the visit of President Clinton in 1998, which was viewed by many here as a sign that statehood was on the way.
But the last five years have been bleak, even by Gaza's standards. The Palestinian uprising in September 2000 brought an end to peace negotiations, and Israel sealed its border to most of the tens of thousands of Gazans who used to commute to work daily.
More than 1.3 million Palestinians, most of them classified as refugees, are packed into a territory about five miles wide and 25 miles long. Israel has controlled about a quarter of the land in the Gaza Strip for settlements, farming and security. Overall, the territory has few jobs, no major industries and no prospect of sustaining itself as an independent economic entity.
Palestinians say the Israeli departure will not improve Gazans' lives if it is not accompanied by freedom of movement. They want to build a seaport, which Israel has agreed to, but which will take two to three years to construct. The Palestinians also insist on reopening an airport that the Israelis closed at the beginning of the uprising; so far the Israelis refuse, citing security concerns.
Palestinians say that it is essential for people and goods to flow freely between Gaza and the West Bank, and that the Palestinians need to control the border with Egypt. Israel has not yet agreed to relinquish control on those fronts, but the sides appear to be moving toward a deal that would effectively put the Palestinians in charge of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
That would allow Gazans to travel to the wider world and return without passing through Israeli security, which they have been unable to do since Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
At least a few Palestinians, including Jamal Hamad, 73, are adamant that nothing will be gained with the Israeli withdrawal.
Mr. Hamad, whose cinder-block home in central Gaza is just a few hundred yards from the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, has lived a life shaped by the conflict with Israel. When he was a teenager, his family fled its home in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, during the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli war that broke out at Israel's independence.
He was living in El Arish, Egypt, when his family home was badly damaged by a rocket in the 1967 war. When he settled in Gaza a quarter-century ago, he found himself within shooting distance of Kfar Darom, the site of frequent exchanges of gunfire in the last five years.
One of Mr. Hamad's two wives, Hamida, was shot in the leg eight months ago by a stray bullet that pierced their front door. She has been receiving treatment in Egypt for the last two months.
"What does it matter if the Jews move a short distance away?" asked Mr. Hamad, banging a bamboo cane to the ground for emphasis. "The Jews will still be here, here and here," he said, pointing in rapid succession to Gaza's eastern border, just a few miles distant; toward the Mediterranean, less than a mile to the west, where the navy patrols; and to the sky, where Israeli aircraft maintain constant surveillance.
"The only thing that will make me happy, that will make me feel like I'm 15 again, is to go back to my home in Jaffa," he said. "I would go back there even if I had to sacrifice both my arms and both my legs."
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, says he is evacuating the settlers because he sees no future for Jews in Gaza, adding that he believes that the withdrawal will improve Israel's security.
But many Israelis on the right denounce the pullout as a victory for terrorism. They say it will be interpreted by Palestinians as Israeli weakness, and in the words of Mr. Sharon's recently resigned finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza will become "a giant base for terrorism."
Abu al-Bara, 20, who belongs to the Palestinian Resistance Committees, is convinced that Palestinian rocket fire, though wildly inaccurate and rarely lethal, is driving the Israelis out. He says he also believes that it will ultimately force them from the West Bank.
Why Greater Israel Never Came to Be
Why 'Greater Israel' Never Came to Be
By ETHAN BRONNER
FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had? How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good?
But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something very different. It is an admission not of error but of failure. Their cherished goal - the resettlement of the full biblical land of Israel by contemporary Jews - is not to be. The reason: not enough of them came.
"We have had to come to terms with certain unanticipated realities," acknowledged Arye Mekel, Israeli consul general in New York. "Ideologically, we are disappointed. A pure Zionist must be disappointed because Zionism meant the Jews of the world would take their baggage and move to Israel. Most did not."
David Kimche, who was director general of Israel's foreign ministry in the 1980's, noted: "The old Zionist nationalists' anthem was a state on 'the two banks of the River Jordan.' When that became impractical, we talked about 'greater Israel,' from the Jordan to the sea. But people now realize that this, too, is something we won't be able to achieve."
The failure has two main sources. First, contrary to the expectations of the early Zionists, as Ambassador Mekel noted, most of the world's Jews have not joined their brethren to live in Israel. Of the world's 13 million to 14 million Jews, a minority - 5.26 million - make their home in Israel, and immigration has largely dried up. Last year, a record low 21,000 Jews immigrated to Israel.
Of course, Israel is a remarkably successful state, a democracy with a high standard of living and many proud accomplishments. Yet the misery that Zionists expected Jews elsewhere to suffer has not materialized. More than half a century after the establishment of the Jewish state, more Jews live in the United States than in Israel.
The second explanation for the shift in settlement policy is that the Palestinian population has grown far more rapidly - and Palestinians have proved far more willing to fight - than many on the Israeli right had anticipated. On Thursday, the newspaper Haaretz reported that the proportion of Jews in the combined population of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza had dropped below 50 percent for the first time. This means, many Israelis argue, that unless they yield territory, they will have to choose a Jewish state or a democratic one; they will not be able to have both.
While all acknowledge that Jewish immigration never achieved anticipated levels and that the Palestinian population has ballooned, the question of the role played by Palestinian violence in Mr. Sharon's decision to disengage is hotly contested. Some argue that the two Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and from 2000 to the present, drove Israel out. Others say that Israel's increasingly effective counterterror measures - the building of a barrier, killings of terror leaders and military reoccupation of selective Palestinian cities - broke the back of the insurgents, allowing Israel the sense of strength to walk away. In fact, both factors seem likely to have played a role.
"Of course terror has a role in the disengagement," said Michael Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Institute, a conservative Jerusalem research group. "It convinced us that Gaza was not worth holding onto and awakened us to the demographic danger. It took two intifadas for a majority of Israelis to decide that Gaza is not worth it."
A senior Israeli official who spent years closely associated with Likud leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said that Israelis long had little respect for Palestinians as fighters, but that had changed.
"The fact that hundreds of them are willing to blow themselves up is significant," he said. "We didn't give them any credit before. In spite of our being the strongest military power in the Middle East, we lost 1,200 people over the last four years. It finally sank in to Sharon and the rest of the leadership that these people were not giving up."
Some came to a similar conclusion much earlier. The Israeli left has been calling for a withdrawal from Gaza for years, and even many on the right believed settlement there to be futile and counterproductive. Mr. Kimche, the former foreign ministry official, recalled that when Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of the conservative Likud party was running against Yitzhak Rabin of Labor in the early 1990's, several Shamir advisers told him: "Unless you withdraw from Gaza, you're going to lose these elections." He did not withdraw; he lost.
Mr. Rabin himself said that he decided to negotiate a withdrawal with the Palestinians when he realized how unpopular military service in Gaza had become.
"He said privately - I heard him say it - that military reservists don't want to serve in the occupied territories and while they are not formally refusing they are finding excuses to stay away," Yoel Esteron, managing editor of Yediot Aharonot, recalled. "That put a real burden on the army and it meant we couldn't stay there forever."
With Gaza soon no longer in their hands, Israelis will face a much more complex set of decisions regarding the occupied West Bank. Settlements in distant corners of the West Bank are also being dismantled in the coming weeks, but no one knows how much more land Mr. Sharon and his successors will be willing to yield. What is clear, however, is that the internal Israeli logic of what is taking place this week - a scaling back of ambition in the face of reality - could lead to traumatic withdrawals of larger numbers of people on the West Bank.
As Mr. Sharon said in an interview with Yediot published on Friday, when asked about other isolated settlements, "Not everything will remain."
Leaving Gaza: Lives Unsettled by the Pullout
Leaving Gaza: Lives Unsettled by the Pullout
By STEVEN ERLANGER
RAFIAH YAM, Gaza, Aug. 12 - Yaffa Hadad yanked out the dishwasher and started cleaning around it, as her husband's Palestinian workers bubble-wrapped the exercise bicycle and carried boxes out to the container on the sandy street.
A last pot simmered on the stove, under the blank spaces where the kitchen shelves had been, for the last Sabbath dinner of the Israeli settlement of Rafiah Yam.
All 27 families would gather, then many would go their own way - most to temporary housing prepared by the Israeli government in nearby Nitzanim or Mavqim, to figure out what to do with their lives.
All four Hadad children are here, including two from the army, but the family, which has held together, is now warring over where to go. Mrs. Hadad and the two older children want to stay close to Gaza, and take a temporary home in Nitzanim. But her husband, Kobi, has found a place to farm on a kibbutz in the north of Israel, at Bustan ha-Galil, near Acre.
"I feel like I'm going to die," Mrs. Hadad said. "We're in a big fight over where to go, and the kids are crying."
She wants to be near her friends and think about where to move next; he is desperate to get started. "I don't want to be aimless and jobless and bored," said Mr. Hadad, who was covered with sweat after helping a neighbor pack up a refrigerator. "I don't want to sit around a refugee camp and cry and mourn. I want to work, to wake up in the morning and work the land. There I can start on the first day."
The Hadads' struggle is a small, poignant reflection of the larger internal conflict produced by Israel's pullout from all 21 settlements in Gaza and 4 in the West Bank, due to start this week. After more than a year of speeches and debates, rallies and prayers, protests and conflict, votes and resignations, Israeli is finally going to pack up its presence in Gaza, including its vast military infrastructure, and leave it to the Palestinians, intending to end a 38-year occupation.
At midnight Sunday, it becomes illegal for Israeli civilians to remain in Gaza. On Monday and Tuesday, army soldiers and police officers will knock on every Israeli door in Gaza, informing people of their need to depart and offering help and transportation. Many settlers plan to leave then, after farewell ceremonies. The authorities may also begin to arrest the most aggressive of the 3,000 or so nonresidents who have entered Gaza to protest the pullout and challenge it.
Already, some of the 55,000 soldiers and police officers who will be engaged in the pullout are camped in tent cities just inside the closed military zone of Gaza, and there are checkpoints everywhere, set up to try to stop infiltrators. There are lines of armor, too, in case the army is ordered to suppress attacks from Palestinian militants.
On Wednesday morning, the soldiers and the police will begin to surround settlements and remove anyone who remains, forcibly if necessary. Moving vans will enter just behind the officers, to pack up whatever goods are left behind. Then bulldozers will knock down the houses and public buildings to make them uninhabitable, to prevent reinfiltration and occupation by Palestinian militants.
There are likely to be scenes of trauma and pathos, from young men and women screaming words like "Nazi" at uniformed officers their own age, as they have in the past, to soldiers and police officers dragging off little girls with cats and Jews in prayer shawls who will passively resist. There may be violence in some settlements, like Kfar Darom, an already militant place now with as many as 600 militant nonresidents.
[On Sunday, five Israeli soldiers were hit by "friendly fire" near Kfar Darom, Reuters reported. The army said a Palestinian opened fire on the settlement and soldiers returned fire. A tank shot at a building where the gunman was concealed, hitting him and wounding the soldiers in an armored vehicle, the army said. An officer was among those hurt.]
Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the chief of staff, has worked to prepare his soldiers, men and women, but he worries about the emotional impact. "No simulation is going to present the commanders and the soldiers with exactly what they are going to meet there," he told the newspaper Haaretz. "The smell of the coffee that they are drinking in the house that is going to be evacuated, the family that is sitting down to breakfast. This is the emotional element of the evacuation, and it is the most complicated part to imagine and to grapple with."
Then the synagogues will be deconsecrated and destroyed, and the bodies of 48 settlers killed in Gaza will be removed in a special, private ceremony, requiring the survivors to undergo a repeat of the mourning period that followed the deaths.
Then the military installations will go, including the Israeli presence along the Philadelphi route, the international border with Egypt. By Sept. 4, the army hopes, it will have completed the evacuation of civilians. By the end of the year, Israel should be out of Gaza entirely.
Then there will be larger questions of Gaza, which has implications for Israel's domestic and foreign policy, for the stability of the Palestinian Authority, for the future of the Middle East peace plan known as the road map - and for the reputations of President Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who have invested a great deal in trying to make Gaza work.
Will it be judged a success for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, first by the Israelis themselves, who will soon find themselves in an election campaign, and then by the rest of the world? Will the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, make a success out of Gaza, this overcrowded, sandy spit of coast with few natural resources except a beautiful beach? Or will Gaza, as Mr. Sharon's rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, warns, become "a giant base for terrorism" and a "Hamastan," fatally undermining Mr. Abbas?
These are the obvious questions for later, with no obvious answers now. For now, the mood on this side of Gaza is as mournful and angry as the mood on the Palestinian side is celebratory and expectant. Even Mr. Abbas, trying to ensure that the elected authorities get credit, and not the radicals of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is vowing that the "return" of Gaza will soon be followed by that of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
[Hamas held a news conference in Gaza City on Saturday in which it stated again its intent to continue fighting Israel, refused to disarm until the occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem ends and claimed credit for the Gaza pullout.]
The signs of the withdrawal are everywhere here. The streets are crowded with moving containers. People carry cartons. Some embrace publicly, weeping. Others, festooned in orange, the color of the Gaza settlers, mingle in the streets.
Many of the young come from the West Bank, vowing resistance. They sleep on lawns and in crawl spaces. For them, it is a kind of religious and political Woodstock, sanctioned by their rabbis and fueled by their fears that their own homes, settlements in the West Bank, may be next.
Stocks are low in the settlement supermarkets. Decent cigarettes are scarce. Many of the cash machines are empty. In Neve Dekalim on Friday, they took the safes out of the bank, winching them on to a truck, and the espresso machines out of a popular cafe.
Mrs. Hadad releases her anxiety by scrubbing. She is furious at her government, and furious at those who would urge soldiers to disobey orders. "I don't want to reach a place where the settlers win over the Israeli Army," she said. "If so, we would lose our state, and I don't want to lose my country."
Her son Lior, 19, a paratrooper in the army, keeps watch on the Palestinian workers, a precaution normal for Gaza, but he banters with them. He says that he wants to fight for his house but that he knows the battle is lost and that his real fight is for the unity of his family.
What impressed him most, he said, was a visit last week from an admired Israeli commander of the army's famed Givati brigade, Col. Imad Fares. Colonel Fares, a Druse, brought Kobi Hadad a black-metal dagger, carried only by the commandos, as a gesture of friendship and thanks for long service with the Givati and later with the security forces in Gaza.
Lior showed off the dagger, marked with both its brand, Ka-Bar, and U.S.M.C. "It looks like a humble present, but it means a lot," Lior said. "Everyone here looks up to Fares like a god."
Down the street, near an emptied house with slogans attacking Mr. Sharon spray-painted in orange on the walls, Rami Yaccov, with his Palestinian workers, was finishing his own move in Gaza's harsh sun. The house was a concrete shell, bare of its furniture, windows and doors. Only the tiles and stone kitchen counter were left. Mr. Yaccov was weeping without noticing. He took a cactus from his lawn, smashed its pot and hefted the plant onto the truck.
He looked back at the house, and then up, at a faded Israeli flag flying from the roof. He went upstairs and pulled the pole out, then said with grinding bitterness, "The flag of the land of Israel."
He came downstairs again, broke the pole across his knee, tossed the flag into his truck and drove away.
As Families Move Out, Resisters Move In
As Families Move Out, Resisters Move In
By DINA KRAFT
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip, Aug. 13 - In anticipation of Israel's planned pullout of the Gaza Strip next week, Neve Dekalim's usually hushed palm-lined streets have become the scene of traffic jams and rallies. It is hard to find a parking spot, and the wait at the checkout counter at the grocery store can near an hour.
The sudden population surge was caused by the arrival from Israel and the West Bank of hundreds of Jews who oppose the pullout. Most of them have entered Gaza illegally, despite the army's effort to enforce a closed military zone. The "guests," as the residents of Neve Dekalim call them, hope their presence will make it more difficult for Israeli security forces to evacuate the settlement.
Neve Dekalim, Hebrew for Palm Springs, was founded in 1983. Longtime residents remember what it looked like when they first arrived - seemingly endless stretches of sand dunes, only a handful of paved roads and one small grocery store. Now Gaza's largest Israeli settlement, it is a picture of desert suburbia with red-tile roofs on white stucco homes and watered lawns.
Those who live here speak of a rare sense of community and connection, a place where residents leave their front doors unlocked and children run in and out of each other's homes. "It's like one big family," said Yoav Tal, 55, who was packing up his three-story house Friday after 19 years here. "Everyone helps each other."
Before the moving vans began arriving in recent days, Neve Dekalim was home to some 500 families, most of them religious Jews aligned with Israel's nationalist camp. It is not clear how many families will leave before the Aug. 17 deadline set by the government.
Many of Neve Dekalim's residents came from neighboring working-class towns in southern Israel, seeing the move here as a step up the economic and social ladder. Government financial incentives meant they could buy more affordable and larger homes than inside Israel. The move also allowed them to build a community of religious Jews.
The community grew into the main commercial and municipal center for Gaza settlers. It has a gas station, a grocery store, four synagogues, health clinics, two seminaries and several schools and day care centers. The settlement borders the Palestinian town of Khan Yunis, where scores of mortar shells have been launched at Neve Dekalim.
Further betraying the sense of suburban calm, a hulking cement wall separates Khan Yunis from Neve Dekalim. The settlement is ringed by electric fencing and guarded by soldiers. At a recent prayer rally, about 2,000 people prayed and sang, asking God to intervene to help halt the government's plan to evacuate their town along with the 20 other Jewish settlements in Gaza. The mood here swings between despair and the hope that an 11th-hour miracle might yet occur.
A banner strung across the plaza of one of the synagogues tried to boost morale: "Remember: Things can change from their all-time worst to their best ever."
Settlers Mark Sabbath in Gaza
Settlers Mark Somber Jewish Sabbath in Gaza
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:25 p.m. ET
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Jewish settlers held fast to their faith on Saturday on perhaps the last Sabbath many will celebrate in the occupied Gaza Strip.
"The name of our neighborhood is called 'Faith' and it reflects how we feel," said Tamar Meir, 46, of the Neve Dekalim settlement. "Only the Lord can decide things and I look forward to celebrating the Sabbath here next year."
Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's ``disengagement'' plan, Israel intends to issue eviction notices to the 8,500 settlers in Gaza early on Monday and begin removing those who refuse to leave on Wednesday.
Government figures show that more than half of the settlers have applied for state compensation, signaling they would go quietly.
But in Neve Dekalim, many of whose 2,600 residents are religious and stake a biblical claim to Gaza, only a handful of shipping containers are parked outside settlers' homes, an indication that few intend to leave voluntarily.
Cakes and flowers adorned settler Ronit Avitan's table on the Sabbath with her many guests celebrating the sacred day with a sense of hope.
"I hope this will not be our last Sabbath here and while the situation does dominate our conversations, we are carrying on with our lives. The government cannot take that away from us," she said.
Among her Sabbath guests was Moshe, a 17-year old activist from the West Bank settlement of Ginot Shomron. Like hundreds of other pullout opponents, he managed to slip past Israeli soldiers into Gaza to reinforce settlers who refuse to go.
"I am sleeping in a bomb shelter at the moment but I am here to help shore up the settlements and stop the government's plans. I believe they will bring disaster for Israel," he said while munching on roasted nuts.
In a show of defiance, settlers in Neve Dekalim said they plan to inaugurate a Jewish ritual bath on Tuesday.
This year, Sabbath runs into the 9th of Av fast, a traditional mourning period marking the destruction of the biblical Temples in Jerusalem.
"This period is full of meaning for us but we are resolute. I believe we are like David and the government is like Goliath. We have to prevail," Meir said.
The World Court has described as illegal the settlements Israel has built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Around 240,000 Israelis live in the enclaves among 3.8 million Palestinians.
American Jews feel Pain of Withdrawal from Gaza Strip
Pain of Israel's Withdrawal From Gaza Strip Is Felt by American Jews, Too
By JOSEPH BERGER and ROBIN SHULMAN
Starting this week, American Jews are likely to see wrenching scenes of Jewish soldiers expelling defiant Jewish settlers from their homes and farms in the Gaza Strip, as Israel begins its pullout there. The experience for many Americans will be almost as painful and perplexing as it will be for Israelis, because the two societies are so interwoven, with the Gaza settlers' ranks made up of many transplanted New Yorkers and other Americans.
Still, like most Israelis, Jews in New York and across the nation largely support the government of Ariel Sharon in its plan to pull the 9,000 settlers out of Gaza.
Practically every secular American Jewish group has lined up behind disengagement, as have major Reform and Conservative Jewish organizations, though their support has been in the muted form of op-ed articles and newspaper ads, rather than demonstrations.
Even the more left-wing Jewish-American groups that have long favored disengagement say they have seen no need to pound the drums for it, since the Sharon government, the Bush administration and American and Israeli public opinion are overwhelmingly behind it. "There's really not a lot of convincing to do," said Lewis E. Roth, assistant director of the Washington-based Americans for Peace Now.
As in Israel, however, there is fierce opposition to the move, and much of it is centered among the Orthodox, particularly the same ardently Zionistic adherents of modern Orthodoxy and members of Lubavitch Hasidic synagogues who make up much of the settler movement in the dominant Gush Katif string of settlements in Gaza.
"Nine thousand people moved into the Gush Katif area at the behest of a Labor government and other governments," said Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel, a Manhattan-based group made up of 150 Orthodox congregations. "For years they lived under fire and they wake up one day and are told, 'You're history.' It's never happened before in Jewish history that Jewish people exile Jewish people."
(The Israeli government did evacuate resistant settlers once before - when Israel completed the return of the Sinai peninsula to Egypt in 1982.)
Still, some Orthodox rabbis, often thought of as fiery activists in American Jewish politics, have taken pains to admonish Jews not to encourage Israeli soldiers to disobey army orders and urged them to cease comparing the evictions to the Nazi deportations.
"Both the left and the right must guard their language," wrote Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Bronx, who opposes disengagement, in an op-ed article in The Forward, the 108-year-old Jewish weekly. "The settlers are not 'occupiers' and Prime Minister Sharon is not a 'fascist.' While a word is a word and a deed is a deed, words lead to deeds."
At midnight last night, Jews protesting the Gaza withdrawal and fasting for Tishah b'Ab, the traditional day of mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Temples, were to gather at the Israeli Consulate, on the East Side of Manhattan, for a vigil. Today, there is to be a rally at the consulate and a march to the United Nations. The marchers are to be joined there by a caravan of Lubavitch Hasidim from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. An even larger rally is scheduled for Tuesday across from the United Nations.
On Friday, in the heavily Orthodox Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn, streamers and ribbons in orange - the color of support for the resistant Gaza settlers - dangled from car antennas and side mirrors.
Sharon Rudolph, a 46-year-old receptionist shopping for fruits and vegetables, wore an orange shirt that said, "Let My People Stay." She had just returned from a visit to Gaza. "We can't be giving it back - it doesn't belong to the Arabs," she said.
Mitchell Orlian, a professor of Bible at Yeshiva University, made sure to buy lettuce, parsley and dill imported from Gush Katif, as he always does. "If I were there, I would let myself be dragged out," he said.
There has not been an equivalent outpouring of vocal support from those who agree with the pullout, beyond op-ed articles or sermons like one given just over a week ago by Rabbi Donald Goor of Temple Judea, a Reform synagogue in Tarzana, Calif., who said, "those who are questioning the withdrawal are not only questioning this government but questioning government itself."
One leader of a major national Jewish group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sharp differences among his members, said that while his group supported disengagement, "there's no great enthusiasm" for it. He said there were worries that Israel's unilateral gesture would "be rewarded with more violence," and that a seaport and an airport in Gaza that may someday be reopened would become gateways for weapons to be used against Israelis.
A problem for more than a few liberal Jews is that the disengagement is being pushed by someone who was regarded as their archenemy in the theater of Israeli politics: Mr. Sharon, who promoted and built settlements as a government minister. Mr. Sharon has in recent years decided that it no longer makes sense to have Israeli soldiers protect so few settlers in an area that has more than 1.3 million Palestinians.
"The honest-to-God liberals who would be enthusiastic are so suspicious of Sharon that it would take a lot of wooing to get them out in the streets, and nobody's wooing them," said J. J. Goldberg, editor of The Forward.
There is ambivalence within the multicolored world of Orthodoxy as well. Avi Shafran, a spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, a leading traditionalist group, said that while most of its members were unhappy with the withdrawal, they recognized that the move was being made by an elected Israeli government.
Many settlers were influenced by rabbinical and philosophical champions of a greater Israel that embraces Gaza and the West Bank, leaders who contended that giving up territory was a sin. Most Hasidim, according to Mr. Goldberg, have never accepted this thesis.
Still, opposition to disengagement is a minority view. An annual survey by the American Jewish Committee found support for unilateral disengagement running 65 to 28, with the remainder unsure. David A. Harris, the organization's executive director, said "our business is not to second-guess decisions of war and peace made by democratically elected Israeli governments."
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and a supporter of the pullout, has criticized the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which he is a member, for failing to lobby more effectively for disengagement. Malcolm I. Hoenlein, the conference's executive vice chairman, denied that the support has been lukewarm.
But he acknowledged that many members are upset not just about the removal of settlers but also about the uprooting of 30 synagogues, six yeshivas, and several cemeteries, and they fear that withdrawal from Gaza will shift terrorism to the West Bank. "People feel pain," he said.
Security Tightens for Gaza Withdrawal
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:35 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli authorities set up roadblocks across southern Israel and cut off bus service in the Gaza Strip on Sunday as they began final preparations to begin dismantling all 21 Jewish settlements inside Gaza.
Israeli troops were to seal off the settlements at midnight (5 p.m. EDT), marking the start of the withdrawal, the first time Israel will pull out of settled land Palestinians want for a future state. Two days later, soldiers will begin forcibly removing any remaining settlers.
As of Sunday, thousands of residents were vowing to resist eviction. Other opponents of the pullout have threatened to hold massive demonstrations and to run the roadblock on the Gaza border to create chaos and torpedo the withdrawal.
Police spokesman Avi Zelba said authorities set up a cordon of roadblocks in southern Israel on Sunday to prevent opponents from interfering. Only residents of southern Israel and those with a legitimate reason for being there will be allowed to cross.
Meanwhile, Palestinian security forces, along with several Egyptian officers, began deploying near Jewish settlements in Gaza. By Monday, thousands of Palestinian troops will be deployed near settlements, to prevent militants from reaching the area.
Vice Premier Shimon Peres gave a pep talk to Israeli troops stationed near the Gaza border, telling them their coming task was crucial to protecting democracy.
''The settlements must be evacuated they cannot stay here,'' he told reporters. ''I understand that there are feelings. I have sympathy (for the settlers), but they cannot replace a national choice.''
Resistant settlers also made last-minute preparations, with their leaders issuing instructions on how to break the morale of soldiers sent to carry out eviction orders, according to the Yediot Ahronot daily.
The settlers were told to give children's drawings to the soldiers and to take pictures of troops, telling them that history will remember them for their crimes, the newspaper reported.
Settlers also planned to seal off their communities early Monday to prevent soldiers from delivering eviction notices.
The army closed the checkpoint into the Gush Katif cluster of settlements in southern Gaza to everyone but residents weeks ago, but thousands of protesters managed to infiltrate. The army said Sunday that as many as 4,000 disengagement opponents might be inside the settlements; settlers said the figure was much higher.
''I think that's a sign that a lot of soldiers are also protesting in their way by letting people come in,'' said Anita Tucker, a resident of the Netzer Hazani settlement.
Brig. Gen. Dan Harel, the military commander in charge of the pullout, said the infiltrators would have no impact on the pullout.
''They won't prevent us from carrying out the disengagement at the time, moment and way that we see fit,'' he told Army Radio.
Meanwhile, hundreds of settlers gathered at the Gush Katif cemetery singing traditional prayers of redemption as part of a ceremony commemorating the Tisha B'Av holy day marking the destruction of the Jewish Temples. The cemetery's 49 graves are to be moved as part of the pullout.
''Go to the holy patriarchs, the holy matriarchs, tell them `We want to stay here,''' Rabbi Yosef Elnikaveh said, symbolically addressing the dead at the ceremony. ''Tell them you don't want anyone to touch you. Tell them you don't want them to open your graves, that you want your graves to remain and be opened only upon the resurrection of the dead.''
Another Gaza settler, Yoav Itzhaki, said he and some settlers wanted to establish their own authority in the region, autonomous from Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
''The state of Israel does not have the right to expel the local residents,'' Itzhaki told Army Radio, reading from the group's charter. ''In light of this, we, the residents of the Katif Strip, have decided to stay in our homes and to establish the Jewish Authority of the Gaza Strip.''
Police had expected large crowds Sunday at the Western Wall, the Jewish holy site in Jerusalem, as a sign of protest during the Tisha B'Av fast day. However, the crowds were smaller than feared, possibly because of the August heat.
Israel's Islamic Movement called on Muslims to gather at the adjacent Haram a Sharif, the disputed holy site claimed by both Muslims and Jews, to protect it. Thousands of police were sent to the area to prevent a possible outbreak of violence between Arabs and Jews, police said.
About 55,000 Israeli troops and police are expected to take part in the pullout from the settlements in Gaza and four others in the northern West Bank. Some of the forces will remove the settlers from their homes, others will prevent protesters from interfering; still others will protect troops and settlers from attacks by Palestinian militants trying to create the impression they are driving the Israelis out.
The Israelis and Palestinians also opened a joint-operations center on the Gaza border to help them respond to any violence, Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said. Israel has promised to retaliate harshly if fired on during the pullout.
Israeli and Palestinian commanders held their final security coordination meeting Sunday, exchanging maps of troop placements in preparation for the deployment later Sunday of 7,500 Palestinian troops along the outskirts of the Gaza settlements to deter militant attacks, the Israeli army said.
After Decades of Disapponitment, Gazans are Preparing to Rejoice
After Decades of Disappointment, Gazans Are Preparing to Rejoice
By GREG MYRE
GAZA, Aug. 11 - In this land of poverty, violence and dashed dreams of statehood, the Palestinians are revving up for the rarest of events in the Gaza Strip: a celebration.
The Palestinian Authority is planning rallies as if it were the homestretch of an election campaign. Small sewing factories are cranking out thousands of Palestinian flags and street banners, T-shirts and backpacks that proclaim, "Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem." That message, intended to give Palestinians hope that Gaza first will not be Gaza last, is not exactly what the Israelis want to hear.
Israel's planned evacuation of Jewish settlers and soldiers from the strip, an operation set to begin Monday, has generated at least a small streak of optimism among Gazans. For the first time in decades, for example, they may be able to travel abroad without Israeli permission.
Still, they say, the good cheer is tempered by the false dawns of the past decade and the belief that Israel will continue to wield control over Gaza from the outside.
"I think there was a collective depression that permeated Gaza," said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer raised in Canada who serves as an adviser to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas. "There is a small window of opportunity here, and we're trying to get people excited about what could happen. They're leaving. We're staying. And it's time to rebuild."
The Palestinian Authority is sending workers door to door to prepare families for the withdrawal, though their message makes it sound as though a hurricane is blowing in from the Mediterranean. Families are advised to stock up on food, water and medicine in case the pullout turns turbulent and Israel's security forces impose curfews and closings.
A pamphlet being distributed to every household in Gaza responds to questions like "Will I be able to reach my job in Gaza's industrial zone during the withdrawal?" Answer: "It's not clear."
As Palestinians count down the days until the Israeli departure, many share a wish to stroll the grounds of the 21 Jewish settlements for a close-up look at the single-family houses with red tile roofs and modest gardens.
"I want to go to Gush Katif, in the south," said Ahmed Kazaer, 50. "I hear it is the most beautiful." Mr. Kazaer runs a sewing factory here in Gaza City that is making T-shirts for the withdrawal.
But fulfilling even that simple desire may have to wait two months or more. Israel has set aside a month to evacuate the settlers. After the settlers go, the military will probably need another few weeks to tear down the more than 1,500 homes in the Gaza settlements, a move that the Palestinians have approved. Private American philanthropists are working to put together a consortium to buy some of the Israeli greenhouses still standing and transfer them to Palestinian control.
When the soldiers leave and the Palestinian Authority gains control, its first step will be to send technical teams to survey the settlements and ensure they are safe. The Palestinians have complained of receiving limited information about the settlements and say the survey could also take weeks.
Eventually the authority plans to take Gazans on organized bus tours of what will remain of the settlements, but that is not likely before October, Ms. Buttu said.
Palestinian and Israeli leaders, as well as the security forces, are trying to coordinate to ensure that there will be no Palestinian mortar or rocket fire during the Israeli withdrawal, and no storming and looting of the settlements by Palestinians after the Israelis leave for good.
Israel wants to avoid the perception of withdrawing under fire, while the Palestinian Authority seeks to demonstrate its control over the newly acquired territory. But Gaza is prone to chaos, and celebration could dissolve into anarchy.
Mr. Abbas's Fatah movement, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, and Hamas, the militant Islamic group that has carried out many of the deadliest attacks against Israel, are both claiming credit for the Israeli withdrawal, and they may hold rival events.
Jamal Abu Samhadanah, leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, a small armed faction, said the Palestinian Authority should "use all its cars and jeeps to get people to the settlements to celebrate immediately." He added, "These are going to be beautiful moments, and no one is allowed to prevent us from celebrating."
Meanwhile, Gaza's lawlessness is on display almost daily.
Western aid workers have been kidnapped on several occasions recently, though they were soon freed unharmed. The International Committee of the Red Cross suspended field operations this week after one of its offices was sprayed with bullets. And last week assailants set off a bomb in Gaza City outside the home of Zuhair Sourani, the chief justice of the Palestinian courts.
"I don't think I was the target, but this was intended to terrorize the judiciary," Mr. Sourani said.
"Mr. Abbas is a man who wants to uphold the law," the justice said, "but he must show that the Palestinian Authority can fight whoever is breaking the law."
Still, there is a sense of anticipation not felt here in recent years. Ask a Gazan to recall the last time of hope, and he is likely to cite the arrival in 1994 of Yasir Arafat, who initially established the Palestinian Authority in Gaza after more than a quarter-century in exile.
Or perhaps he will recall the visit of President Clinton in 1998, which was viewed by many here as a sign that statehood was on the way.
But the last five years have been bleak, even by Gaza's standards. The Palestinian uprising in September 2000 brought an end to peace negotiations, and Israel sealed its border to most of the tens of thousands of Gazans who used to commute to work daily.
More than 1.3 million Palestinians, most of them classified as refugees, are packed into a territory about five miles wide and 25 miles long. Israel has controlled about a quarter of the land in the Gaza Strip for settlements, farming and security. Overall, the territory has few jobs, no major industries and no prospect of sustaining itself as an independent economic entity.
Palestinians say the Israeli departure will not improve Gazans' lives if it is not accompanied by freedom of movement. They want to build a seaport, which Israel has agreed to, but which will take two to three years to construct. The Palestinians also insist on reopening an airport that the Israelis closed at the beginning of the uprising; so far the Israelis refuse, citing security concerns.
Palestinians say that it is essential for people and goods to flow freely between Gaza and the West Bank, and that the Palestinians need to control the border with Egypt. Israel has not yet agreed to relinquish control on those fronts, but the sides appear to be moving toward a deal that would effectively put the Palestinians in charge of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
That would allow Gazans to travel to the wider world and return without passing through Israeli security, which they have been unable to do since Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
At least a few Palestinians, including Jamal Hamad, 73, are adamant that nothing will be gained with the Israeli withdrawal.
Mr. Hamad, whose cinder-block home in central Gaza is just a few hundred yards from the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, has lived a life shaped by the conflict with Israel. When he was a teenager, his family fled its home in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv, during the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli war that broke out at Israel's independence.
He was living in El Arish, Egypt, when his family home was badly damaged by a rocket in the 1967 war. When he settled in Gaza a quarter-century ago, he found himself within shooting distance of Kfar Darom, the site of frequent exchanges of gunfire in the last five years.
One of Mr. Hamad's two wives, Hamida, was shot in the leg eight months ago by a stray bullet that pierced their front door. She has been receiving treatment in Egypt for the last two months.
"What does it matter if the Jews move a short distance away?" asked Mr. Hamad, banging a bamboo cane to the ground for emphasis. "The Jews will still be here, here and here," he said, pointing in rapid succession to Gaza's eastern border, just a few miles distant; toward the Mediterranean, less than a mile to the west, where the navy patrols; and to the sky, where Israeli aircraft maintain constant surveillance.
"The only thing that will make me happy, that will make me feel like I'm 15 again, is to go back to my home in Jaffa," he said. "I would go back there even if I had to sacrifice both my arms and both my legs."
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, says he is evacuating the settlers because he sees no future for Jews in Gaza, adding that he believes that the withdrawal will improve Israel's security.
But many Israelis on the right denounce the pullout as a victory for terrorism. They say it will be interpreted by Palestinians as Israeli weakness, and in the words of Mr. Sharon's recently resigned finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Gaza will become "a giant base for terrorism."
Abu al-Bara, 20, who belongs to the Palestinian Resistance Committees, is convinced that Palestinian rocket fire, though wildly inaccurate and rarely lethal, is driving the Israelis out. He says he also believes that it will ultimately force them from the West Bank.
Why Greater Israel Never Came to Be
Why 'Greater Israel' Never Came to Be
By ETHAN BRONNER
FOR those who long considered it folly to settle a handful of Jews among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the decision to remove them starting this week seems an acceptance of the obvious. What possible future could the settlers have had? How could their presence have done the state of Israel any good?
But for those, like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who created and nurtured the settlements, the move to dismantle them is something very different. It is an admission not of error but of failure. Their cherished goal - the resettlement of the full biblical land of Israel by contemporary Jews - is not to be. The reason: not enough of them came.
"We have had to come to terms with certain unanticipated realities," acknowledged Arye Mekel, Israeli consul general in New York. "Ideologically, we are disappointed. A pure Zionist must be disappointed because Zionism meant the Jews of the world would take their baggage and move to Israel. Most did not."
David Kimche, who was director general of Israel's foreign ministry in the 1980's, noted: "The old Zionist nationalists' anthem was a state on 'the two banks of the River Jordan.' When that became impractical, we talked about 'greater Israel,' from the Jordan to the sea. But people now realize that this, too, is something we won't be able to achieve."
The failure has two main sources. First, contrary to the expectations of the early Zionists, as Ambassador Mekel noted, most of the world's Jews have not joined their brethren to live in Israel. Of the world's 13 million to 14 million Jews, a minority - 5.26 million - make their home in Israel, and immigration has largely dried up. Last year, a record low 21,000 Jews immigrated to Israel.
Of course, Israel is a remarkably successful state, a democracy with a high standard of living and many proud accomplishments. Yet the misery that Zionists expected Jews elsewhere to suffer has not materialized. More than half a century after the establishment of the Jewish state, more Jews live in the United States than in Israel.
The second explanation for the shift in settlement policy is that the Palestinian population has grown far more rapidly - and Palestinians have proved far more willing to fight - than many on the Israeli right had anticipated. On Thursday, the newspaper Haaretz reported that the proportion of Jews in the combined population of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza had dropped below 50 percent for the first time. This means, many Israelis argue, that unless they yield territory, they will have to choose a Jewish state or a democratic one; they will not be able to have both.
While all acknowledge that Jewish immigration never achieved anticipated levels and that the Palestinian population has ballooned, the question of the role played by Palestinian violence in Mr. Sharon's decision to disengage is hotly contested. Some argue that the two Palestinian intifadas, or uprisings, from 1987 to 1993 and from 2000 to the present, drove Israel out. Others say that Israel's increasingly effective counterterror measures - the building of a barrier, killings of terror leaders and military reoccupation of selective Palestinian cities - broke the back of the insurgents, allowing Israel the sense of strength to walk away. In fact, both factors seem likely to have played a role.
"Of course terror has a role in the disengagement," said Michael Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Institute, a conservative Jerusalem research group. "It convinced us that Gaza was not worth holding onto and awakened us to the demographic danger. It took two intifadas for a majority of Israelis to decide that Gaza is not worth it."
A senior Israeli official who spent years closely associated with Likud leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said that Israelis long had little respect for Palestinians as fighters, but that had changed.
"The fact that hundreds of them are willing to blow themselves up is significant," he said. "We didn't give them any credit before. In spite of our being the strongest military power in the Middle East, we lost 1,200 people over the last four years. It finally sank in to Sharon and the rest of the leadership that these people were not giving up."
Some came to a similar conclusion much earlier. The Israeli left has been calling for a withdrawal from Gaza for years, and even many on the right believed settlement there to be futile and counterproductive. Mr. Kimche, the former foreign ministry official, recalled that when Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of the conservative Likud party was running against Yitzhak Rabin of Labor in the early 1990's, several Shamir advisers told him: "Unless you withdraw from Gaza, you're going to lose these elections." He did not withdraw; he lost.
Mr. Rabin himself said that he decided to negotiate a withdrawal with the Palestinians when he realized how unpopular military service in Gaza had become.
"He said privately - I heard him say it - that military reservists don't want to serve in the occupied territories and while they are not formally refusing they are finding excuses to stay away," Yoel Esteron, managing editor of Yediot Aharonot, recalled. "That put a real burden on the army and it meant we couldn't stay there forever."
With Gaza soon no longer in their hands, Israelis will face a much more complex set of decisions regarding the occupied West Bank. Settlements in distant corners of the West Bank are also being dismantled in the coming weeks, but no one knows how much more land Mr. Sharon and his successors will be willing to yield. What is clear, however, is that the internal Israeli logic of what is taking place this week - a scaling back of ambition in the face of reality - could lead to traumatic withdrawals of larger numbers of people on the West Bank.
As Mr. Sharon said in an interview with Yediot published on Friday, when asked about other isolated settlements, "Not everything will remain."
Leaving Gaza: Lives Unsettled by the Pullout
Leaving Gaza: Lives Unsettled by the Pullout
By STEVEN ERLANGER
RAFIAH YAM, Gaza, Aug. 12 - Yaffa Hadad yanked out the dishwasher and started cleaning around it, as her husband's Palestinian workers bubble-wrapped the exercise bicycle and carried boxes out to the container on the sandy street.
A last pot simmered on the stove, under the blank spaces where the kitchen shelves had been, for the last Sabbath dinner of the Israeli settlement of Rafiah Yam.
All 27 families would gather, then many would go their own way - most to temporary housing prepared by the Israeli government in nearby Nitzanim or Mavqim, to figure out what to do with their lives.
All four Hadad children are here, including two from the army, but the family, which has held together, is now warring over where to go. Mrs. Hadad and the two older children want to stay close to Gaza, and take a temporary home in Nitzanim. But her husband, Kobi, has found a place to farm on a kibbutz in the north of Israel, at Bustan ha-Galil, near Acre.
"I feel like I'm going to die," Mrs. Hadad said. "We're in a big fight over where to go, and the kids are crying."
She wants to be near her friends and think about where to move next; he is desperate to get started. "I don't want to be aimless and jobless and bored," said Mr. Hadad, who was covered with sweat after helping a neighbor pack up a refrigerator. "I don't want to sit around a refugee camp and cry and mourn. I want to work, to wake up in the morning and work the land. There I can start on the first day."
The Hadads' struggle is a small, poignant reflection of the larger internal conflict produced by Israel's pullout from all 21 settlements in Gaza and 4 in the West Bank, due to start this week. After more than a year of speeches and debates, rallies and prayers, protests and conflict, votes and resignations, Israeli is finally going to pack up its presence in Gaza, including its vast military infrastructure, and leave it to the Palestinians, intending to end a 38-year occupation.
At midnight Sunday, it becomes illegal for Israeli civilians to remain in Gaza. On Monday and Tuesday, army soldiers and police officers will knock on every Israeli door in Gaza, informing people of their need to depart and offering help and transportation. Many settlers plan to leave then, after farewell ceremonies. The authorities may also begin to arrest the most aggressive of the 3,000 or so nonresidents who have entered Gaza to protest the pullout and challenge it.
Already, some of the 55,000 soldiers and police officers who will be engaged in the pullout are camped in tent cities just inside the closed military zone of Gaza, and there are checkpoints everywhere, set up to try to stop infiltrators. There are lines of armor, too, in case the army is ordered to suppress attacks from Palestinian militants.
On Wednesday morning, the soldiers and the police will begin to surround settlements and remove anyone who remains, forcibly if necessary. Moving vans will enter just behind the officers, to pack up whatever goods are left behind. Then bulldozers will knock down the houses and public buildings to make them uninhabitable, to prevent reinfiltration and occupation by Palestinian militants.
There are likely to be scenes of trauma and pathos, from young men and women screaming words like "Nazi" at uniformed officers their own age, as they have in the past, to soldiers and police officers dragging off little girls with cats and Jews in prayer shawls who will passively resist. There may be violence in some settlements, like Kfar Darom, an already militant place now with as many as 600 militant nonresidents.
[On Sunday, five Israeli soldiers were hit by "friendly fire" near Kfar Darom, Reuters reported. The army said a Palestinian opened fire on the settlement and soldiers returned fire. A tank shot at a building where the gunman was concealed, hitting him and wounding the soldiers in an armored vehicle, the army said. An officer was among those hurt.]
Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the chief of staff, has worked to prepare his soldiers, men and women, but he worries about the emotional impact. "No simulation is going to present the commanders and the soldiers with exactly what they are going to meet there," he told the newspaper Haaretz. "The smell of the coffee that they are drinking in the house that is going to be evacuated, the family that is sitting down to breakfast. This is the emotional element of the evacuation, and it is the most complicated part to imagine and to grapple with."
Then the synagogues will be deconsecrated and destroyed, and the bodies of 48 settlers killed in Gaza will be removed in a special, private ceremony, requiring the survivors to undergo a repeat of the mourning period that followed the deaths.
Then the military installations will go, including the Israeli presence along the Philadelphi route, the international border with Egypt. By Sept. 4, the army hopes, it will have completed the evacuation of civilians. By the end of the year, Israel should be out of Gaza entirely.
Then there will be larger questions of Gaza, which has implications for Israel's domestic and foreign policy, for the stability of the Palestinian Authority, for the future of the Middle East peace plan known as the road map - and for the reputations of President Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who have invested a great deal in trying to make Gaza work.
Will it be judged a success for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, first by the Israelis themselves, who will soon find themselves in an election campaign, and then by the rest of the world? Will the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, make a success out of Gaza, this overcrowded, sandy spit of coast with few natural resources except a beautiful beach? Or will Gaza, as Mr. Sharon's rival, Benjamin Netanyahu, warns, become "a giant base for terrorism" and a "Hamastan," fatally undermining Mr. Abbas?
These are the obvious questions for later, with no obvious answers now. For now, the mood on this side of Gaza is as mournful and angry as the mood on the Palestinian side is celebratory and expectant. Even Mr. Abbas, trying to ensure that the elected authorities get credit, and not the radicals of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, is vowing that the "return" of Gaza will soon be followed by that of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
[Hamas held a news conference in Gaza City on Saturday in which it stated again its intent to continue fighting Israel, refused to disarm until the occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem ends and claimed credit for the Gaza pullout.]
The signs of the withdrawal are everywhere here. The streets are crowded with moving containers. People carry cartons. Some embrace publicly, weeping. Others, festooned in orange, the color of the Gaza settlers, mingle in the streets.
Many of the young come from the West Bank, vowing resistance. They sleep on lawns and in crawl spaces. For them, it is a kind of religious and political Woodstock, sanctioned by their rabbis and fueled by their fears that their own homes, settlements in the West Bank, may be next.
Stocks are low in the settlement supermarkets. Decent cigarettes are scarce. Many of the cash machines are empty. In Neve Dekalim on Friday, they took the safes out of the bank, winching them on to a truck, and the espresso machines out of a popular cafe.
Mrs. Hadad releases her anxiety by scrubbing. She is furious at her government, and furious at those who would urge soldiers to disobey orders. "I don't want to reach a place where the settlers win over the Israeli Army," she said. "If so, we would lose our state, and I don't want to lose my country."
Her son Lior, 19, a paratrooper in the army, keeps watch on the Palestinian workers, a precaution normal for Gaza, but he banters with them. He says that he wants to fight for his house but that he knows the battle is lost and that his real fight is for the unity of his family.
What impressed him most, he said, was a visit last week from an admired Israeli commander of the army's famed Givati brigade, Col. Imad Fares. Colonel Fares, a Druse, brought Kobi Hadad a black-metal dagger, carried only by the commandos, as a gesture of friendship and thanks for long service with the Givati and later with the security forces in Gaza.
Lior showed off the dagger, marked with both its brand, Ka-Bar, and U.S.M.C. "It looks like a humble present, but it means a lot," Lior said. "Everyone here looks up to Fares like a god."
Down the street, near an emptied house with slogans attacking Mr. Sharon spray-painted in orange on the walls, Rami Yaccov, with his Palestinian workers, was finishing his own move in Gaza's harsh sun. The house was a concrete shell, bare of its furniture, windows and doors. Only the tiles and stone kitchen counter were left. Mr. Yaccov was weeping without noticing. He took a cactus from his lawn, smashed its pot and hefted the plant onto the truck.
He looked back at the house, and then up, at a faded Israeli flag flying from the roof. He went upstairs and pulled the pole out, then said with grinding bitterness, "The flag of the land of Israel."
He came downstairs again, broke the pole across his knee, tossed the flag into his truck and drove away.
As Families Move Out, Resisters Move In
As Families Move Out, Resisters Move In
By DINA KRAFT
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip, Aug. 13 - In anticipation of Israel's planned pullout of the Gaza Strip next week, Neve Dekalim's usually hushed palm-lined streets have become the scene of traffic jams and rallies. It is hard to find a parking spot, and the wait at the checkout counter at the grocery store can near an hour.
The sudden population surge was caused by the arrival from Israel and the West Bank of hundreds of Jews who oppose the pullout. Most of them have entered Gaza illegally, despite the army's effort to enforce a closed military zone. The "guests," as the residents of Neve Dekalim call them, hope their presence will make it more difficult for Israeli security forces to evacuate the settlement.
Neve Dekalim, Hebrew for Palm Springs, was founded in 1983. Longtime residents remember what it looked like when they first arrived - seemingly endless stretches of sand dunes, only a handful of paved roads and one small grocery store. Now Gaza's largest Israeli settlement, it is a picture of desert suburbia with red-tile roofs on white stucco homes and watered lawns.
Those who live here speak of a rare sense of community and connection, a place where residents leave their front doors unlocked and children run in and out of each other's homes. "It's like one big family," said Yoav Tal, 55, who was packing up his three-story house Friday after 19 years here. "Everyone helps each other."
Before the moving vans began arriving in recent days, Neve Dekalim was home to some 500 families, most of them religious Jews aligned with Israel's nationalist camp. It is not clear how many families will leave before the Aug. 17 deadline set by the government.
Many of Neve Dekalim's residents came from neighboring working-class towns in southern Israel, seeing the move here as a step up the economic and social ladder. Government financial incentives meant they could buy more affordable and larger homes than inside Israel. The move also allowed them to build a community of religious Jews.
The community grew into the main commercial and municipal center for Gaza settlers. It has a gas station, a grocery store, four synagogues, health clinics, two seminaries and several schools and day care centers. The settlement borders the Palestinian town of Khan Yunis, where scores of mortar shells have been launched at Neve Dekalim.
Further betraying the sense of suburban calm, a hulking cement wall separates Khan Yunis from Neve Dekalim. The settlement is ringed by electric fencing and guarded by soldiers. At a recent prayer rally, about 2,000 people prayed and sang, asking God to intervene to help halt the government's plan to evacuate their town along with the 20 other Jewish settlements in Gaza. The mood here swings between despair and the hope that an 11th-hour miracle might yet occur.
A banner strung across the plaza of one of the synagogues tried to boost morale: "Remember: Things can change from their all-time worst to their best ever."
Settlers Mark Sabbath in Gaza
Settlers Mark Somber Jewish Sabbath in Gaza
By REUTERS
Filed at 12:25 p.m. ET
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Jewish settlers held fast to their faith on Saturday on perhaps the last Sabbath many will celebrate in the occupied Gaza Strip.
"The name of our neighborhood is called 'Faith' and it reflects how we feel," said Tamar Meir, 46, of the Neve Dekalim settlement. "Only the Lord can decide things and I look forward to celebrating the Sabbath here next year."
Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's ``disengagement'' plan, Israel intends to issue eviction notices to the 8,500 settlers in Gaza early on Monday and begin removing those who refuse to leave on Wednesday.
Government figures show that more than half of the settlers have applied for state compensation, signaling they would go quietly.
But in Neve Dekalim, many of whose 2,600 residents are religious and stake a biblical claim to Gaza, only a handful of shipping containers are parked outside settlers' homes, an indication that few intend to leave voluntarily.
Cakes and flowers adorned settler Ronit Avitan's table on the Sabbath with her many guests celebrating the sacred day with a sense of hope.
"I hope this will not be our last Sabbath here and while the situation does dominate our conversations, we are carrying on with our lives. The government cannot take that away from us," she said.
Among her Sabbath guests was Moshe, a 17-year old activist from the West Bank settlement of Ginot Shomron. Like hundreds of other pullout opponents, he managed to slip past Israeli soldiers into Gaza to reinforce settlers who refuse to go.
"I am sleeping in a bomb shelter at the moment but I am here to help shore up the settlements and stop the government's plans. I believe they will bring disaster for Israel," he said while munching on roasted nuts.
In a show of defiance, settlers in Neve Dekalim said they plan to inaugurate a Jewish ritual bath on Tuesday.
This year, Sabbath runs into the 9th of Av fast, a traditional mourning period marking the destruction of the biblical Temples in Jerusalem.
"This period is full of meaning for us but we are resolute. I believe we are like David and the government is like Goliath. We have to prevail," Meir said.
The World Court has described as illegal the settlements Israel has built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Around 240,000 Israelis live in the enclaves among 3.8 million Palestinians.
American Jews feel Pain of Withdrawal from Gaza Strip
Pain of Israel's Withdrawal From Gaza Strip Is Felt by American Jews, Too
By JOSEPH BERGER and ROBIN SHULMAN
Starting this week, American Jews are likely to see wrenching scenes of Jewish soldiers expelling defiant Jewish settlers from their homes and farms in the Gaza Strip, as Israel begins its pullout there. The experience for many Americans will be almost as painful and perplexing as it will be for Israelis, because the two societies are so interwoven, with the Gaza settlers' ranks made up of many transplanted New Yorkers and other Americans.
Still, like most Israelis, Jews in New York and across the nation largely support the government of Ariel Sharon in its plan to pull the 9,000 settlers out of Gaza.
Practically every secular American Jewish group has lined up behind disengagement, as have major Reform and Conservative Jewish organizations, though their support has been in the muted form of op-ed articles and newspaper ads, rather than demonstrations.
Even the more left-wing Jewish-American groups that have long favored disengagement say they have seen no need to pound the drums for it, since the Sharon government, the Bush administration and American and Israeli public opinion are overwhelmingly behind it. "There's really not a lot of convincing to do," said Lewis E. Roth, assistant director of the Washington-based Americans for Peace Now.
As in Israel, however, there is fierce opposition to the move, and much of it is centered among the Orthodox, particularly the same ardently Zionistic adherents of modern Orthodoxy and members of Lubavitch Hasidic synagogues who make up much of the settler movement in the dominant Gush Katif string of settlements in Gaza.
"Nine thousand people moved into the Gush Katif area at the behest of a Labor government and other governments," said Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel, a Manhattan-based group made up of 150 Orthodox congregations. "For years they lived under fire and they wake up one day and are told, 'You're history.' It's never happened before in Jewish history that Jewish people exile Jewish people."
(The Israeli government did evacuate resistant settlers once before - when Israel completed the return of the Sinai peninsula to Egypt in 1982.)
Still, some Orthodox rabbis, often thought of as fiery activists in American Jewish politics, have taken pains to admonish Jews not to encourage Israeli soldiers to disobey army orders and urged them to cease comparing the evictions to the Nazi deportations.
"Both the left and the right must guard their language," wrote Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Bronx, who opposes disengagement, in an op-ed article in The Forward, the 108-year-old Jewish weekly. "The settlers are not 'occupiers' and Prime Minister Sharon is not a 'fascist.' While a word is a word and a deed is a deed, words lead to deeds."
At midnight last night, Jews protesting the Gaza withdrawal and fasting for Tishah b'Ab, the traditional day of mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Temples, were to gather at the Israeli Consulate, on the East Side of Manhattan, for a vigil. Today, there is to be a rally at the consulate and a march to the United Nations. The marchers are to be joined there by a caravan of Lubavitch Hasidim from Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. An even larger rally is scheduled for Tuesday across from the United Nations.
On Friday, in the heavily Orthodox Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn, streamers and ribbons in orange - the color of support for the resistant Gaza settlers - dangled from car antennas and side mirrors.
Sharon Rudolph, a 46-year-old receptionist shopping for fruits and vegetables, wore an orange shirt that said, "Let My People Stay." She had just returned from a visit to Gaza. "We can't be giving it back - it doesn't belong to the Arabs," she said.
Mitchell Orlian, a professor of Bible at Yeshiva University, made sure to buy lettuce, parsley and dill imported from Gush Katif, as he always does. "If I were there, I would let myself be dragged out," he said.
There has not been an equivalent outpouring of vocal support from those who agree with the pullout, beyond op-ed articles or sermons like one given just over a week ago by Rabbi Donald Goor of Temple Judea, a Reform synagogue in Tarzana, Calif., who said, "those who are questioning the withdrawal are not only questioning this government but questioning government itself."
One leader of a major national Jewish group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sharp differences among his members, said that while his group supported disengagement, "there's no great enthusiasm" for it. He said there were worries that Israel's unilateral gesture would "be rewarded with more violence," and that a seaport and an airport in Gaza that may someday be reopened would become gateways for weapons to be used against Israelis.
A problem for more than a few liberal Jews is that the disengagement is being pushed by someone who was regarded as their archenemy in the theater of Israeli politics: Mr. Sharon, who promoted and built settlements as a government minister. Mr. Sharon has in recent years decided that it no longer makes sense to have Israeli soldiers protect so few settlers in an area that has more than 1.3 million Palestinians.
"The honest-to-God liberals who would be enthusiastic are so suspicious of Sharon that it would take a lot of wooing to get them out in the streets, and nobody's wooing them," said J. J. Goldberg, editor of The Forward.
There is ambivalence within the multicolored world of Orthodoxy as well. Avi Shafran, a spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, a leading traditionalist group, said that while most of its members were unhappy with the withdrawal, they recognized that the move was being made by an elected Israeli government.
Many settlers were influenced by rabbinical and philosophical champions of a greater Israel that embraces Gaza and the West Bank, leaders who contended that giving up territory was a sin. Most Hasidim, according to Mr. Goldberg, have never accepted this thesis.
Still, opposition to disengagement is a minority view. An annual survey by the American Jewish Committee found support for unilateral disengagement running 65 to 28, with the remainder unsure. David A. Harris, the organization's executive director, said "our business is not to second-guess decisions of war and peace made by democratically elected Israeli governments."
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and a supporter of the pullout, has criticized the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, of which he is a member, for failing to lobby more effectively for disengagement. Malcolm I. Hoenlein, the conference's executive vice chairman, denied that the support has been lukewarm.
But he acknowledged that many members are upset not just about the removal of settlers but also about the uprooting of 30 synagogues, six yeshivas, and several cemeteries, and they fear that withdrawal from Gaza will shift terrorism to the West Bank. "People feel pain," he said.
