Behind The Smoke Screen Of The Gaza Pullout

[Violet_Crumble]

by Tanya Reinhart
April 14, 2005
Yediot Aharonot

Translated from Hebrew by Mark Marshall

Sharon travelled to the USA as a hero of peace, as if he had already evacuated Gaza and only the follow-up remained to be worked out. What has completely disappeared from the public agenda is what is happening meanwhile in the West Bank. The media continue to deluge us daily with disengagement storms, like the Nitzanim bubble. But for now the disengagement the Gaza pullout - exists only on paper. On the ground, no settler has yet received compensation. Even those who agreed to accept compensation are now waiting, because if they have a chance to get Nitzanim - the pearl of Israeli real estate - why hurry? In the meantime, three and a half months before the projected date of evacuation, it is still not clear where the evacuees will be housed until the discussions regarding their final relocation destination are concluded. Contrary to the prevailing impression, no infrastructure has been set up even for their temporary dwellings. “The Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency, responsible for providing the ‘caravillas’ has so far received no order from the government”. (Petersburg, “Yediot Ahronot”, 8 April 2005)

If Sharon intends to evacuate the Gaza settlements, he is doing so with outrageous inefficiency. He is far more efficient in the West Bank. There, plans are carried out precisely as scheduled. Right from the start, during the first agreements between Sharon and Netanyahu one year ago about the disengagement plan, it was agreed that the disengagement would not be put into effect before the “separation fence” was completed on the western side of the West Bank(1). Indeed, the construction of the wall is moving towards completion. In July the announced date for the beginning of the Gaza evacuation the wall surrounding East Jerusalem and cutting it off from the West Bank will be in place. The Palestinians who live there will be able to leave only with permits. The centre of life in the West Bank will become an enclosed prison. As well, the northern wall, which has already imprisoned the residents of Tul Karem, Qalqilya and Mas’ha, and which has robbed them of their lands, continues to advance southwards. Now the bulldozers are headed for the lands of Bil’in and Safa, bordering the settlements of Modi’in Elit. The farmers who are losing their lands are trying to stand their ground, together with Israeli opponents of the wall. But who would hear about their sufferings and about their struggle, amid the tumult over the disengagement?

The disengagement plan was born in February 2004, at the height of a wave of international criticism over the wall project, on the eve of the opening of deliberations at the international court in The Hague. In the ruling that was handed down in July, the court determined that the route of the wall was a blatant and serious violation of international law. Moreover, the court indicated that there was a danger of “a further change in the demographic composition as a result of the departure of the Palestinian population from certain areas” (para. 122). In other words, the court warned of a process of transfer.

According to UN data 237,000 Palestinians will be trapped between the wall and the Green Line and 160,000 others will remain on the Palestinian side, cut off from their land. (The route that was approved at the government’s meeting in February 2005 reduces their number only slightly) (2). What is to be expected for those people, for the farmers who lose their land, for the imprisoned who are cut off from their families and their livelihoods? In the ghost towns of Tul Karem and Qualqilya and the villages around Mas’ha, many have already left in order to seek subsistence on the edges of towns in the centre of the West Bank. How much longer will the others be able to hold on under conditions of despair and atrophy, inside villages which have become prisons?


http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=7638

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Who's Babylon, us or them?

[Jdemsindiana]

2. Yes Give it all up NOW!!!

WE ARE NOT HAPPY UNTIL YOU ARE IN THE SEA!!!!!!!