World Tribune.com

2-day Gaza pullout a done deal; Half of 15,000 resisted

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, August 19, 2005

KFAR DAROM, the Gaza Strip — Israel's military, under Palestinian missile and mortar fire, has mostly completed the eviction of an estimated 16,000 Israelis from the Gaza Strip.

By Friday, all but four of the 21 Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip were empty, with bulldozers preparing for the demolition of homes, schools and synagogues. The remaining communities were expected to be evacuated next week.

Israeli military sources termed the evacuation successful, saying the worst-case scenarios of armed clashes or heavy Palestinian missile strikes did not materialize. They said that within two days, more than 15,000 Israelis — about half of them engaged in some resistance — were removed from the Gaza Strip.



The withdrawal has taken place under Palestinian fire. On Thursday, an Israeli soldier was injured when a Hamas-origin Kassam-class short-range missile landed in the Jewish community of Netsarim, Middle East Newsline reported. The military did not respond.

In several cases, the troops stormed synagogues where resistors were huddled in a last stand.

"It could be that by Tuesday and Wednesday all of the residents would be evacuated from the Gaza Strip," Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Dan Harel said.

In the Jewish community of Gadid, about 2,000 Israeli police and soldiers battled hundreds of unarmed resistors on Friday. About 200 resistors torched cars and threw eggs, oil and paint toward soldiers and anti-riot police during an evacuation effort meant to be completed by Friday afternoon.

On Thursday, thousands of police and soldiers arrived with armored personnel carriers, water cannons, U.S.-origin D-9 armored bulldozers and horses to evacuate what authorities deemed the most difficult bastions of resistance. In Kfar Darom, army and police units evacuated 2,500 people from Kfar Darom, many of whose residents were killed in Palestinian attacks and regarded as the most ideological of the Jewish communities in the Gaza Strip.

At the same time, army and police units raided the communities of Kfar Yam and Shirat Hayam in the southern Gaza Strip. Within hours, these communities were empty. About 1,000 people were arrested, most of them for infiltrating the Gaza Strip.

There was no armed resistance in any of the Jewish communities. In Kfar Yam, a reserve army officer brandished an unloaded M-16 assault rifle and demanded that he and his friends be evacuated by the military rather than anti-riot police. He later surrendered his weapon and army troops entered the home and dragged out about 35 people, most of them women and children.

"Indeed, the most impressive aspect of the disengagement thus far has been its complete adherence to plan," Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel wrote on Friday. "Particularly noteworthy was the effectiveness of the mental preparation given the evacuating forces."

Military sources said the army was ordered to complete the evacuation of the entire Gaza Strip by Friday. They said they expect Palestinians, led by such groups as Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to rush the evacuated Jewish communities.

The army, in an operation closely monitored by the United States, plans to evacuate Katif and Netsarim on Aug. 22, the sources said. Residents of these communities said they would not resist. A handful of residents were still in communities in the northern Gaza Strip, but no resistance was reported.

"I think that what we have seen is good cooperation between the Israelis and Palestinians, and I think both sides can be proud of the way that it has unfolded to date," U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Thursday.


Copyright © 2005 East West Services, Inc.

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