The Negev shuffle

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

But within hours of the meeting where the deal was worked out, the settlers said they did not agree to any limits on the numbers of demonstrators, nor had they given up their plan to march on Gush Katif. In short, once again there’s anticipation for a clash between the settlers and police and soldiers. The men and women in uniform have been taken off disengagement assignments practicing how to evacuate recalcitrant settlers and instead have been deployed throughout the Negev to prevent attempts to infiltrate Gaza. Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra was saying police would limit attendance to 5,000 – and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and former Likud defense minister Moshe Arens were announced as speakers. That limit in size upped the confrontation with militant Rightists, who threatened to march directly on Gush Katif and skip the dillydallying in Sderot and Ofakim.

There are splits in the ranks of the settlement movement. What began last year as a monolithic bloc utterly certain of its strength and political capability to halt the disengagement has now fragmented and splintered. Most of the settlers have already hurried to sign up for their compensation and most of those who remain in Gaza are expected to do so, as well. Even MK Zvi Handel of the National Union, the MK from Gush Katif, is said to have made sure his family doesn’t lose compensation. Meanwhile, some leading rabbis, who only a few days ago were still encouraging soldiers to refuse orders, are speaking of surrender – and of going into ‘Exile,’ as if the rest of the state of Israel is not part of the Land of Israel. Other ideologues of the settlement movement are calling the Yesha council’s demonstrations ‘child’s play’ and mere ‘lobbying’ compared to the real mission at hand – getting to Gush Katif and doing whatever can be done to disrupt the evacuation. With a certain degree of delusions of grandeur, these spokesmen, such as National Union MK Arye Eldad, still believe ‘the masses’ will rise up and march on Gush Katif, forcing the army and police to ‘go back to their masters’ to ask for new orders.

But the polls now being conducted daily paint a different story. While there is sympathy for the actual settlers of Gaza and northern Samaria who are being forced to move against their wills, the vast majority of Israelis favors the withdrawals from Gaza and northern West Bank. The latest polls taken daily by Channel 10 show a consistent 20 percent lead by the proponents of disengagement over the opponents. Other polls, interestingly, show that while Israelis remain deeply suspicious of the Palestinians, a majority favors a return to some form of political negotiations with them after the disengagement is over.

There are meanwhile no direct political negotiations but the pace of direct meetings between Israeli and Palestinian security officials has stepped. Yesterday a ‘successful’ meeting took place between field commanders in Gaza, with the Palestinians presenting a plan to place some 10,000 police between the settlements being evacuated and the neighboring Palestinian towns, to prevent any attempts to overrun the evacuated settlements. Today, IDF officers are expected to report to Palestinian counterparts on planned timing of evacuations. The overall plan is for PA forces to move in as the Israelis move out, thus preventing Hamas or other armed groups from squatting in evacuated settlements. Egyptian military officers are also due in Gaza today, to help train work with Palestinian security forces for the evacuation. Britain’s MI-6 is already at work providing some help in that regard, while the American general, William Ward, and CIA officers, work further behind the scenes to try shoring up the PA security forces for the challenge. According to PA Minister for Civilian Affairs Mohammed Dahlan, considered the strongman of Gaza, the PA is planning ‘national celebrations’ after the Israelis are gone. Presumably, the organized celebrations will supersede any attempts by Hamas to claim a monopoly on what the Palestinians perceive as a victory.

But the focus this morning in the Israeli electronic media was on a Jewish Israeli and two Israeli Arabs who earned their living from driving illegal Palestinian workers into Israel. The Shin Bet has charged them with transporting the suicide bomber who killed 5 and wounded some 100 in Netanya last month. It was the first case of a Jewish Israeli being charged with homicide as an accomplice – he’s reportedly claming it was unwitting – to a suicide bombing. There have been about a dozen Israeli Arabs who have been prosecuted for that crime, since the intifada broke out in fall of 2000.

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