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As Gaza pullout starts, Sharon warns Palestinians

Posted on: Monday, 15 August 2005, 13:38 CDT

By Jonathan Saul

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began his promised pullout from Gaza on Monday and threatened Palestinians with Israel's harshest response ever should they attack once settlers were evacuated.

In a televised address coinciding with the start of the withdrawal, the Israeli leader told Gaza's 8,500 Jewish settlers he shared their pain but also understood the plight of the 1.4 million Palestinians in the coastal strip.

"We cannot hold onto Gaza forever. More than a million Palestinians live there and double their number with each generation. They live in uniquely crowded conditions in refugee camps, in poverty and despair, in hotbeds of rising hatred with no hope on the horizon," he said in the five-minute address.

"The world is waiting for the Palestinian response -- a hand stretched out to peace or the fire of terror. To an outstretched hand we shall respond with an olive branch, but we shall fight fire with the harshest fire ever."

He spoke at the end of a day during which tearful and defiant settlers in Gaza's most hardline enclaves blocked soldiers from delivering eviction notices giving them 48 hours to get out -- or be forced out under Sharon's pullout plan.

Eviction warnings to 9,000 settlers in all 21 settlements in Gaza and four of 120 in the West Bank went into effect at midnight on Sunday under Sharon's plan to "disengage" from conflict with the Palestinians.

In the West Bank, two settlements -- Ganim and Kadim -- became the first to be vacated, an army spokeswoman said. Most of the residents had already left before the eviction order.

BARRICADES AND BODIES

Sharon has sold the pullout as a way to reduce fighting with the Palestinians. Palestinian militants claim it as a victory and Israeli opponents decry it as a surrender to violence, while Washington sees it as a catalyst for renewed peacemaking.

In the largest Gaza settlement, Neve Dekalim, settlers used makeshift barricades and their bodies to impede an operation that paves the way for Israel's first uprooting of settlements on land Palestinians want for a state.

Orit Kalfa, 32, of Neve Dekalim, said: "Gush Katif is an inseparable part of the Land of Israel. We will not leave this place ever and we will not surrender it to terrorists."

Many of the Gaza settlers, joined by up to 5,000 supporters from outside the strip, vowed not to budge, insisting the land was the biblical birthright of Jews. But others did leave.

"The number of families leaving is not small," Eival Giladi, strategic coordinator in Sharon's office, told reporters. "Every family that leaves legitimizes more to do the same."

Giladi said he expected about half the settlers to be out by the time their 48 hours were up at midnight on Wednesday. He said food supplies had been cut off from Monday.

In the Morag settlement, one resident could do little but weep and a soldier put his arm around him for comfort, a scene repeated elsewhere.

In the largely empty Nissanit settlement, soldiers and settlers cried in mourning as they removed sacred objects from the synagogue. All buildings are to be demolished after the withdrawal.

66 PERCENT

Israeli officials say 66 percent of the Israeli families in Gaza have accepted state compensation deals but not all have left. Those who refuse to go could lose a third of the money, which ranges from $150,000 to $400,000 per family.

Palestinian militants have largely observed a truce agreed by President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel in February.

Palestinians welcome Israel's withdrawal from land captured in the 1967 Middle East war. But they fear Sharon devised the Gaza plan as a ruse to cement Israel's hold on most of the West Bank, where 230,000 settlers and 2.4 million Palestinians live.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel, told Reuters he agreed with Sharon that Israel had to leave Gaza to avoid friction.

"The same logic he used to justify leaving Gaza applies to the West Bank and East Jerusalem," Erekat said.

The World Court describes Israeli settlements as illegal. Israel disputes this.

Israel intends to leave the Gaza settlements and the four West Bank enclaves by September 4. It plans to complete the Gaza pullout in October when the last troops come out.

Polls show a majority of Israelis favor quitting Gaza.

Source: REUTERS

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