World>Terrorism & Security
posted September 10, 2004, updated 2:15 p.m.
Conflict in Gaza has political overtones
Settler opposition to Sharon withdrawal plan escalates, as Israel seals off Palestinian travel.
Israeli troops
sealed off the West Bank and Gaza Strip at dawn Friday, imposing a ban on Palestinians entering Israel until the end of the Jewish holiday season next month, reports
Irish Online.Travel restrictions "have become a feature of Jewish holidays, when Israelis gather in synagogues and at public festivities, presenting a potential target" for terrorists, the Irish site says. Normally, thousands of Palestinians cross into Israel each day.
Military sources told the
Associated Press that "humanitarian cases would still be permitted into Israel for medical treatment and other pressing needs." The ban comes amid continued violence in northern Gaza when Israeli troops entered there a week after Hamas bombers killed 16 people on Israeli buses in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba. Tactically, the military incursion was an attempt to
stop terrorists from firing homemade rockets and mortars at Israeli towns, reports the
International Herald Tribune. Strategically, Israel does not want its withdrawal form Gaza to be seen as weakness or a military victory for Hamas. The reoccupying of the northern Gaza Strip is "an
open-ended invasion," writes the
Palestinian Media Center, (PMC). "While Israel speaks about disengagement, its army occupies large parts of the Gaza Strip ... turning it into a big prison," it quotes Palestinian Negotiations Minister Saeb Erakat as saying. Palestinians also protested the fact that Israeli officials continued to warn that they were considering exiling the Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, already confined to his headquarters in Ramallah, reports
PMC. The current conflict in Gaza was not limited to military hostilities between Israel and Palestinians. It also remained one of the most divisive political issues within Israel.
On Friday Israeli settlers protested "that [Prime Minister Ariel]
Sharon does not have a mandate to carry out the withdrawal [from Gaza] and reiterated that the plan would likely result in a civil war," reports the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz.In response to settler protests, Sharon vowed that his plan to withdraw from Gaza, home to 8,000 Jewish settlers and 1.3 million Palestinians, will go ahead despite these threats, reports
AP.
'This plan
will go ahead regardless, period,' Sharon told the
Jerusalem Post in an interview published Friday. Settler passions are at the boiling point, reports
AP.
'
Two things could happen if this program goes ahead without being brought to democratic elections in Israel,' said Eliezer Hasdai, head of a regional settlement council. 'The first is a mass refusal [to evacuate] among soldiers and officers in the army. The other is definitely a type of civil war,' he said,. Hasdai and other leaders first issued their warnings earlier this week in a meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. His statements summarize the extreme position taken by some of the settlers:
'If any one dares to come and touch my daughter's grave ... whether a soldier or the chief of staff, I will shoot him,' the
Maariv daily quoted Hasdai as saying. Asked about the comment Friday, he told
Israel Radio: 'I gave an example of parents who have lost their children ... and they [soldiers] come to remove their graves. It is enough that one bullet is let loose and this will snowball into a local civil war.' Israeli Justice Minister Yosef Lapid on Friday "
slammed a call for forceful opposition to the evacuation of settlements under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan" calling them an 'incitement to civil war... posing a threat to the rule of law and the wellbeing of the state,'" according to
Haaretz. Further fuel to the settler controversy was a controversial opinion poll conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces to find out what Israelis think about the disengagement plan, irking former senior officers concerned about possible politicization within the military, reports
Haaretz.
Soldiers doing compulsory service telephoned 500 people and asked questions such as: Who should evacuate settlements - the army or the police? Will the disengagement help or harm Israel's security? Will it reduce motivation to do reserve duty or volunteer for combat units? What do they think of soldiers refusing to evacuate settlements? Former senior officers were outraged by the poll, saying it is wrong to use the army's money to sound out public opinion on a controversial political issue - particularly as this allows the IDF to influence the controversy by choosing whether to release or bury the results. The poll touches a third rail of Israeli politics - the issue of which government agency, the military or civil police - will adminster the removal of Israeli settlers from Gaza. The survey was financed out of the defense budget, but Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that he neither knew about it nor approved it, reports
Haaretz. This week also saw the publication in Israel of a "right-wing petition signed by 185 IDF officers, former lawmakers, scholars and public figures calling on police and IDF troops to disobey orders to evacuate settlements," reports
Haaretz.
The petition urges troops to "listen to the voice of their personal and national conscience," and refuse to take part in the removal of settlements, an act they define as a crime against humanity, a national crime and an explicitly illegal act. The petition, the first of a series of advertisements ... was signed by Ben Zion Netanyahu, the father of Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as by Netanyahu's brother and uncle. The
Jerusalem Post, in an effort to navigate a compromise in what it perceives as in the best interests of Israel vis-a-vis settler disengagement from Gaza
editorialized:
Above all, however, Sharon's plan has the merit of being something to which most Israelis can give their (grudging) consent. It pulls Israel out of a decades-old, stalemated and sterile ideological debate and poses a clarifying practical question: Which settlements fall within the Israeli consensus, and which do not? A settlement that a majority of Israelis are not willing to give their tax money to sustain is probably not one they should give their sons to defend. That's the essence of democracy, and Sharon has learned to respect it.
Also...
•
Interview with Ariel Sharon: My Algeria is here (
The Jerusalem Post
•
Petition: Gaza pullout a 'crime against humanity' (
The Jerusalem Post)
•
Israeli raid kills Hamas militant (
BBC)
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