Gaza Palestinians celebrate coming Israeli pullout

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Around 10,000 Palestinians danced and
sang, some firing rifles in the air, in early celebrations on
Thursday of Israel’s coming withdrawal from occupied Gaza and
part of the West Bank.

The festivities in Gaza City’s main central square were
sponsored by a special committee created by the Palestinian
Authority government to raise public awareness of the pullout
and encourage Palestinians to mark it peacefully. Egyptian
security officers have been brought in to help train a new
5,000-man Palestinian force to safeguard vacated Jewish
settlements and prevent feared looting and seizures of property
by armed factions powerful in Gaza.

The street celebrations were the first in a popular
campaign launched by the Authority to foster a peaceful
transition in settlement areas and army bases to be vacated by
Israel starting on Aug. 17 in a “disengagement” operation due
to last a month.

Green-red-and-black Palestinian flags fluttered as women
and youth danced in circles and belted out nationalist songs.

Some revellers held assault rifles, posters of late iconic
guerrilla leader and president Yasser Arafat, and banners
saying, “Settlements were historically owned by our people and
let us preserve them” and “Let’s fly the flags over our land.”

Many chanted, “Today Gaza, tomorrow Jerusalem.”

Palestinians want Gaza and the West Bank for a future state
with a capital in Arab East Jerusalem — all areas captured by
Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. But Israel vows never to
yield its largest West Bank settlements or redivide Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie stuck to longstanding
Palestinian goals, saying the impending pullout would not be
enough. “We reject a state with temporary borders … Our march
will stop only in Jerusalem,” he told a cheerful crowd.

“We will be happy to see them getting out from Gaza and
northern West Bank and will prepare ourselves for their
withdrawal from Jerusalem,” Qurie added.

NO JOY FOR ULTRA-RIGHTIST ISRAELIS

While Palestinians rejoiced over the coming pullout,
ultra-nationalist Israelis pondered dwindling options after
failing to force their way past police roadblocks into the main
Gaza settlement to amass resistance against evacuation.

A narrow majority of Israelis favor the plan to “disengage”
from conflict with Palestinians, regarding Gaza and the remote
north of the West Bank as devoid of strategic or economic
value.

Palestinian officials have said ordinary people would be
free to celebrate inside vacated Israeli settlements but not to
seize property whatever pent-up anger and bitterness there may
be after 38 years of occupation.

Some 95 percent of settlement areas has been classified as
“state land” by the Palestinian Authority but it has assured
that the rest will revert to previous Palestinian owners.

Entry will only be allowed after security forces and bomb
squads sweep the area for possible leftover unexploded ordnance
and other health hazards, Palestinian police officials said.

Making a plea to avoid violent chaos in abandoned
settlements, and alluding to Palestinian hopes of advancing
toward statehood via the pullout, Qurie told the crowd: “Be
united and fight against those who will try to harm our image.”

He added: “Send a message out to the whole world that we
are happy for the withdrawal of the occupation …”

However, many Palestinians still fear Israel aims to swap
Gaza for a permanent hold on larger West Bank settlements,
undermining their dream of a state of viable size on land lost
in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.