August 15
D-Day
Monday, August 15, 2005
The hottest day of the year, said the national meteorological service, 36 degrees C (96 F) in Gaza, with humidity in the 80s. But even if it were mid-winter, today would have been hot in Gaza, at least in three main settlement areas – Gush Katif, Netzarim, and the northwestern corner of the Strip. More than 40,000 soldiers and police – half the entire country’s police force, and four IDF divisions -- were invading those settlements, on the first day of the disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank.
Today and tomorrow is a grace period for the settlers who have chosen to remain in their homes – about half the 1,500 households of Gaza’s Jewish settlements. There will be no expulsions today, just the handing over of notices to each and every household, informing it that by order of the government and Knesset, the commander of the IDF in the Gaza Strip informs them that their presence in Gaza is illegal. Today and tomorrow, soldiers will help settlers who need the help to pack their belongings. In an interview with Haaretz this morning, Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, commander of the IDF”s southern command, called the entire affair a ‘tragedy.’
Indeed. The formalistic language of the single sheet of paper that the police and army troops are handing out today, belies the highly emotional and dramatic – some might say hysterical and melodramatic – scenes that were played out this morning. As of noon, the army and police were proceeding as scheduled. At a few of the settlements, they were demonstratively blocked at the entrance to the settlement, so while the TV cameras captured images of praying men and women, of youngsters weeping and shouting at officers, of Rightist MKs calling on soldiers to refuse the orders to evict the settlers, other troops entered the settlement from another direction and went door to door with their orders. There were no reports of outright violence, but plenty of reports of ‘dialogue’ between officers and settlers at the gates. It’s dangerous to make any predictions this morning, but so far it seems that if there is to be any violence, it will come on Wednesday, and it won’t be with the actual inhabitants of the settlements of Gaza, but with their ‘supporters,’ the ‘Hilltop Youth’ from the illegal outposts of the West Bank whose eyes burn with certain faith.
The truth is most of the settlers have already left the settlements. Those that remain are a hard core, backed up by several thousand extremists (themselves mostly teens on summer vacation from religious schools in the settlements of the West Bank or ‘Hilltop Youth from the ‘illegal outposts’ ) who infiltrated past IDF lines over the past several weeks and months. Their goal is to block what in their terminology has become known as ‘the destruction,’ ‘the second Holocaust,’ ‘the moral equivalent of the destruction of the First and Second Temples,’ ‘worse than the destruction of the First and Second Temples,’ ‘worse than the expulsion from Spain.’
In short, the rhetoric has long since crossed all boundaries into hysterical realms of exaggeration that with each comparison to some disaster in Jewish history renders the horrors of pogroms, inquisitions, expulsions and even the Shoah itself meaningless compared to the generous compensation, free housing until their new homes (inside the state of Israel) are built, and government help at every turn to find jobs, schooling for their children, etc. for the settlers of Gaza | and south of Jenin.
The settlements are not shtetls being razed by Cossacks, of course. But the entire ethos of Zionism as expropriated by the nationalist-religious settlement movement of the last 30 years, is being turned on its head, essentially being proven misguided, worse, a mistake. For the settlers, it is the end of an ideology that was all-encompassing, an end to what seemed to them to literally be their God-given right not merely to be masters of the land beyond the Green Line, but the right to determine Israeli security and foreign policy, and in effect, determine how the treasury would spend the state’s money. In short, the masters of the Land have been told that they are no longer the masters.
The irony, so often noted, is that the leader who did the most for them since 1977, Ariel Sharon, is the leader now of the disengagement, the prime minister they refer to as ‘the criminal dictator,’ who promised in his 2003 election campaign that ‘Netzarim is the same as Tel Aviv’ but a year later, launched his plan to quit all the Gazan settlements. He, of all people, exposed the weakness of the settlement movement.
Tonight, Sharon is slated to deliver a speech to the nation on all the electronic media. The advance reports say he won’t apologize to the settlers, but he will praise them as pioneers who were sent to the settlements by the nation and now the nation is recalling them. He will promise them that they will be able to continue their role as the cadres of Zionism, the avant garde of the national movement – in the Negev and in the Galilee. But inside the nationalist-religious movement, its faith shattered by the events, there are indications that at least some of the true believers have given up on the state, betrayed, they believe, by a myopic, hedonist and apathetic public that did not rise up to rescue them from the chief betrayer of all: Sharon, who explained his 180 degree turn in policy with the simple phrase, ‘what you see from here,’ meaning the prime minister’s office, ‘you don’t see from there,’ meaning every other political, indeed military office he has held.
Monday, August 15, 2005
The hottest day of the year, said the national meteorological service, 36 degrees C (96 F) in Gaza, with humidity in the 80s. But even if it were mid-winter, today would have been hot in Gaza, at least in three main settlement areas – Gush Katif, Netzarim, and the northwestern corner of the Strip. More than 40,000 soldiers and police – half the entire country’s police force, and four IDF divisions -- were invading those settlements, on the first day of the disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank.
Today and tomorrow is a grace period for the settlers who have chosen to remain in their homes – about half the 1,500 households of Gaza’s Jewish settlements. There will be no expulsions today, just the handing over of notices to each and every household, informing it that by order of the government and Knesset, the commander of the IDF in the Gaza Strip informs them that their presence in Gaza is illegal. Today and tomorrow, soldiers will help settlers who need the help to pack their belongings. In an interview with Haaretz this morning, Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, commander of the IDF”s southern command, called the entire affair a ‘tragedy.’
Indeed. The formalistic language of the single sheet of paper that the police and army troops are handing out today, belies the highly emotional and dramatic – some might say hysterical and melodramatic – scenes that were played out this morning. As of noon, the army and police were proceeding as scheduled. At a few of the settlements, they were demonstratively blocked at the entrance to the settlement, so while the TV cameras captured images of praying men and women, of youngsters weeping and shouting at officers, of Rightist MKs calling on soldiers to refuse the orders to evict the settlers, other troops entered the settlement from another direction and went door to door with their orders. There were no reports of outright violence, but plenty of reports of ‘dialogue’ between officers and settlers at the gates. It’s dangerous to make any predictions this morning, but so far it seems that if there is to be any violence, it will come on Wednesday, and it won’t be with the actual inhabitants of the settlements of Gaza, but with their ‘supporters,’ the ‘Hilltop Youth’ from the illegal outposts of the West Bank whose eyes burn with certain faith.
The truth is most of the settlers have already left the settlements. Those that remain are a hard core, backed up by several thousand extremists (themselves mostly teens on summer vacation from religious schools in the settlements of the West Bank or ‘Hilltop Youth from the ‘illegal outposts’ ) who infiltrated past IDF lines over the past several weeks and months. Their goal is to block what in their terminology has become known as ‘the destruction,’ ‘the second Holocaust,’ ‘the moral equivalent of the destruction of the First and Second Temples,’ ‘worse than the destruction of the First and Second Temples,’ ‘worse than the expulsion from Spain.’
In short, the rhetoric has long since crossed all boundaries into hysterical realms of exaggeration that with each comparison to some disaster in Jewish history renders the horrors of pogroms, inquisitions, expulsions and even the Shoah itself meaningless compared to the generous compensation, free housing until their new homes (inside the state of Israel) are built, and government help at every turn to find jobs, schooling for their children, etc. for the settlers of Gaza | and south of Jenin.
The settlements are not shtetls being razed by Cossacks, of course. But the entire ethos of Zionism as expropriated by the nationalist-religious settlement movement of the last 30 years, is being turned on its head, essentially being proven misguided, worse, a mistake. For the settlers, it is the end of an ideology that was all-encompassing, an end to what seemed to them to literally be their God-given right not merely to be masters of the land beyond the Green Line, but the right to determine Israeli security and foreign policy, and in effect, determine how the treasury would spend the state’s money. In short, the masters of the Land have been told that they are no longer the masters.
The irony, so often noted, is that the leader who did the most for them since 1977, Ariel Sharon, is the leader now of the disengagement, the prime minister they refer to as ‘the criminal dictator,’ who promised in his 2003 election campaign that ‘Netzarim is the same as Tel Aviv’ but a year later, launched his plan to quit all the Gazan settlements. He, of all people, exposed the weakness of the settlement movement.
Tonight, Sharon is slated to deliver a speech to the nation on all the electronic media. The advance reports say he won’t apologize to the settlers, but he will praise them as pioneers who were sent to the settlements by the nation and now the nation is recalling them. He will promise them that they will be able to continue their role as the cadres of Zionism, the avant garde of the national movement – in the Negev and in the Galilee. But inside the nationalist-religious movement, its faith shattered by the events, there are indications that at least some of the true believers have given up on the state, betrayed, they believe, by a myopic, hedonist and apathetic public that did not rise up to rescue them from the chief betrayer of all: Sharon, who explained his 180 degree turn in policy with the simple phrase, ‘what you see from here,’ meaning the prime minister’s office, ‘you don’t see from there,’ meaning every other political, indeed military office he has held.
posted by solitarioh2005 at
10:56 PM
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