Israeli gunman kills 3 Palestinians in West Bank

Israeli Gunman Kills 3 Palestinians in West Bank
Isolated cases of violence amid forcible eviction of Gaza settlers

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip - Aug. 17, 2005: Jewish settlers sobbed and screamed, some of them ripping their shirts in mourning, as Israeli troops dragged them from homes and synagogues Wednesday — the beginning of the end of Israel’s 38-year occupation of the Gaza Strip.

In the West Bank, a settler killed three Palestinian laborers in a shooting rampage, which Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denounced as a twisted act of “Jewish terror” designed to stop the historic pullout.

Despite the escalation of Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the eviction of die-hard settlers and their nationalist supporters who flooded into Gaza in recent weeks moved forward — with anguish, anger and tears, but more swiftly and smoothly than anyone anticipated.

Some 14,000 unarmed Israeli soldiers and police entered six settlements throughout Wednesday, forcibly evacuating residents who refused to leave voluntarily. According to the army, 1,842 people were evacuated Wednesday. Of 1,600 families in Gaza’s 21 settlements, only 600 remained by the end of the day.

Soldiers and settlers clashed, argued and hugged, reflecting intense and mixed emotions at the uprooting of settlers whose government years ago encouraged them to move to Gaza for the sake of Israel’s security.

“It’s impossible to watch this ... without tears in the eyes,” Sharon said, but he insisted the pullout would make Israel safer.

Heart-rending departures
Palestinian militants said they would refrain from retaliating for the West Bank shooting, at least officially....but Hamas said that they would retaliate. A mortar shell fell near Israeli soldiers in Gaza, without causing casualties, and Palestinian youngsters threw stones at an Israeli tank outside Neve Dekalim, Gaza’s largest Jewish settlement. The tank crew responded with tear gas and fired shells into the sand.

The day was filled with ironic twists and heart-rending scenes as troops carried settlers out of homes, synagogues, even nursery schools.

Soldiers joined anti-withdrawal protesters in prayer before evicting them. An elderly rabbi hugged a Torah scroll as he was escorted away. A young man read from his prayer book as soldiers carried him to a bus. Teenagers burned tires in streets in last acts of defiance.

Under a willow tree at a children’s nursery, mothers clutched babies as troops loaded diapers and toys onto buses for evacuation.

A soldier with tears in her eyes held a toddler in her arms, gave him some candy and implored, “Where is his mother?” Another soldier waved away flies from a toddler lying in a stroller.

By evening, five of the six settlements that troops entered in the morning were cleared, with resisters remaining only in Neve Dekalim — for months the epicenter of resistance. Morag, Bedolah, Ganei Tal, Tel Katifa and Kerem Atzmona were deserted.

Sharon proposed his “disengagement plan” two years ago to ease Israel’s security burden and help preserve the country’s Jewish character by placing Gaza’s 1.3 million Palestinians outside Israeli boundaries.

Palestinian militants are portraying the pullout as a victory for their suicide bombings and rocket attacks. Some fear militants will resume bloodshed once Israel’s Gaza withdrawal is complete.

'An act of Jewish terror'
Israelis and Palestinians have been cooperating to prevent militant violence during the pullout, though lately Jewish extremists have caused the most concern. Wednesday’s attack was the second on Palestinians by Israelis in two weeks. On Aug. 4, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier opened fire on a bus, killing four Israeli Arabs.

Sharon denounced the West Bank shooting as “an act of Jewish terror against innocent Palestinians out of twisted thinking, aimed at stopping the disengagement.” Still, the prime minister was unlikely to allow the incident to derail the pullout — an operation on which he has staked his political career.

The gunman, identified as Asher Weisgan, 40, from the West Bank settlement of Shvut Rahel, was a driver who transported Palestinian laborers to the industrial zone of the nearby settlement of Shilo every day. At the end of the work day, he picked up the workers and briefly stopped at a security post.

He got out of his car, seized the weapon from the guard at knifepoint and fired from close range on two workers sitting in his vehicle. He kept shooting, killing a third worker and wounding two others outside the car.

Hamas holds its fire
Hamas said it wouldn’t immediately retaliate to enable the Gaza pullout to proceed.

“Hamas, as well as all Palestinians, are interested in seeing the Zionist settlers leave our land as soon as possible,” said spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. “But if these crimes continue, factions will not stand by silently.”

Several hundred settlers broke out of Kfar Darom, a settlement due to be evacuated in the next few days, pushed large cinderblocks off a bridge and tried to burn down an Arab house, witnesses said. Palestinians threw stones at the settlers until Israeli troops arrived, doused the fire and pushed the settlers back into the settlement.

In general, however, the evictions were peaceful. While settlers routinely carry weapons, they displayed none when the columns of soldiers and police marched into their communities.

In Neve Dekalim, soldiers wearing flak jackets joined about 150 students holding a prayer session at a religious seminary. The soldiers embraced the students before escorting them onto buses.

The day’s worst act of protest was the self-immolation of a 54-year-old woman from the West Bank who set herself on fire at a police roadblock in southern Israel. She suffered life-threatening burns on 70 percent of her body, police and hospital officials said.

In Neve Dekalim, a man stood before a line of soldiers and held up his daughter, about 10 years old. “Here. take her. Expel her. Please take her, you are such a hero,” he said, pouring scorn on the troops. The little girl, crying, looked up at the policemen and her father in sad confusion.

Another man who had been forced onto a bus held his infant nephew out the window, shouting to the soldiers, “You want him?”

Irate residents in Kerem Atzmona employed Nazi-era imagery to accuse the army of atrocities. Wearing stars of David on their T-shirts, they marched under police escort holding up their hands — evoking a famous photograph from the Holocaust.

CZOA: For 38 years the Jews have lived in the Gaza strip changing whatever area they settled, into beautiful and prosperous places to live. From empty sand the residents of Gush Katif transferred their community into an agricultural marvel becoming one of Israel's largest suppliers of produce.

They withstood years of Palestinian terror attacks and hardship only, in the end, to be forcibly removed from their homes, synagogues and businesses by the Israeli government.

When this so called disengagement backfires in the future and the Palestinians increase their terror attacks against the citizens of Israel, three people will ultimately be responsible for it happening, George Bush, Ariel Sharon and Condoleezza Rice....the blood of these future victims of terror will be on their hands.