August 22 : Palestinians Plan 'Carnival of Victory'

DER SPIEGEL 34/2005 - August 22, 2005
URL: The Gaza Withdrawal

Palestinians Plan 'Carnival of Victory'

By Annette Grossbongardt and Stefan Simons

Following the swift withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians now plan to move forward in developing their own state. The United States is already urging Israel to agree to further concessions, while hardliners at Hamas and the Islamic Jihad push for expanding their holy war.



The road to Palestine's future leads past a rundown block of offices and apartment buildings in downtown Gaza City. Here, on the 15th floor, above the Al-Nada Medical Center, is the office of Abd Al-Hakim Awad. The 39-year-old chairman of the Fatah Youth Organization sits at a huge, leather-upholstered desk planning the grandest gala in the history of the Gaza Strip: the Palestinians' celebration of the Israel's Jewish settlementsä demise.

According to Awad's plan, a "Carnival of Victory" will begin as soon as the last Israeli soldier leaves Gaza, complete with folklore shows, fireworks and parades through the settlements of their former neighbors. Many Palestinians will be setting foot for the first time in areas that have been hidden behind walls and barbed wire for decades. Palestinian authorities plan to operate a shuttle service that will bus hundreds of thousands of curious Palestinians into the settlements -- to tour the "liberated Palestinian territory."

The impoverished Palestinian leadership will spend more than $2 million on the spectacle, including 350,000 hastily sewn flags, baseball hats with the Palestinian national emblem and free white T-shirts imprinted either with the words "Victory and Liberation" or with an image of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. If the Autonomous Authority has its way, Gaza's Islamist militia groups will join in its efforts to make the "historic day," as Fatah leader Awad calls it, a show of national unity, all under the motto: "One flag, one people, one country."

But the Palestinians will need to be patient before erupting into national euphoria. According to Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofas, it could take up to two more months before Israel is ready to turn over the cleared settlement areas.

A swift, clean operation


Nevertheless, even critics of the Jewish state were impressed by the speed of Israel's evacuation of the settlers last week. In a three-day lightning offensive, the Israeli army cleared almost all of the 21 settlements that were created after Israel captured the region in the 1967 Six Day War.

The military's evacuation campaign was impressive. On Wednesday, long columns of troops, some stretching for kilometers, advanced into the settlements. Their orders were to forcibly remove any inhabitants who had refused to leave voluntarily.

Before the evacuation, there was much talk about bloody confrontations, possibly even a "national trauma." But the delicate operation turned out to be far more peaceful than expected, at least by the end of last week. "I am proud of how security forces are behaving," said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, heartily praising Israeli troops and police officers.

But this is not to say that the evacuation was entirely conflict-free. Indeed, officials met with bitter resistance in the strongholds of withdrawal opponents. After an hours-long siege of Kfar Darom, security forces had to squeeze into a container that a crane then lifted onto the roof of a synagogue where hundreds of activists, some capable of violence, were holed up. To the very end, the settlers had actually hoped for divine intervention.

There were also problems in Neve Dekalim, the idyllic 'capital' of Jewish Gaza, with its palm trees, lush gardens and comfortable bungalows. When the military moved into the settlement, acrid smoke rose from specially constructed garbage barricades, enveloping furniture moving vans traveling under police protection. In the synagogue, a rabbi had just explained to hundreds of young people how to lie down on the ground and, according to Jewish custom, begin tearing at their clothes as a sign of mourning. But senior rabbi Jigal Kameneski ultimately had to admit that the miracle he had hoped for never came, and that "the Almighty has other plans for us."

A reeling nationalist movement

The withdrawal has plunged Israel's religious nationalist movement, to which a majority of the settlers belong, into a crisis. Those who see Gaza as part of the Promised Land, believe Sharon is violating Jewish religious law, the Halacha, by withdrawing from the settlements. "The Torah forbids us from giving away to strangers even a square meter of the land that was given to us by God," says Chana Pikar, a spokesperson for the settlement of Shirat Hayam.

But the settlers are still unwilling to call the pullout a defeat. "Our dream has not come to an end," says Natan Dreyfus, who traveled to Gaza from the West Bank to support the resistance. "It's more of a setback, but our ideology remains in place." Dreyfus believes that Sharon will also clear other settlements in the West Bank.

In fact, with its successful Gaza operation, Israel has demonstrated that giving up settlements is possible -- without bloodshed and civil war. For the settlers, however, the withdrawal is all the more difficult because it also means abandoning a special status they have come to enjoy over the years. For decades, they lived in small, tightly-knit communities that were heavily subsidized by the state. Now they'll be moving from generous bungalows with ocean views into normal Israeli lives, and in many cases will be forced to make do with far more modest accommodations.

Last week, the evacuees directed their anger and frustration against the army and police force, cursing Israeli soldiers as "traitors," "Nazis" and even as a "disgrace to our country." With tears and songs of protest, demonstrators, most of whom had come to Gaza from other areas, tried to encourage members of the military to refuse to obey their orders. One settler even held out his crying child to the soldiers and said: "Here, take my daughter and deport her." In most cases, the security forces, which had spent months undergoing special training, met the protestors' provocations with stoic expressions. But many also broke out in tears, and some even had to be relieved of their duties.

Some soldiers conversed with the settlers, comforted them or helped them pack their things. Some wept with the settlers. "This operation is unique in modern military history," raves Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin.

It also generated applause abroad. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, South African President Thabo Mbeki and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had nothing but praise for the courage of Israel's leadership. Moroccan King Mohammed VI, in a conciliatory gesture, wrote that peace will now depend on "giving the Palestinians the chance to form an independent state -- and Israel the chance to live in peace and security."

Is Gaza really the nucleas for a future Palestinan state?

But is the Israeli withdrawal truly the first step toward the independence the Palestinians have been dreaming of? And is the impoverished Gaza Strip, with its 365 square kilometers (about 140 square miles), truly the nucleus of a future state? The international community hopes for a return to the peace process. If the parties to the conflict fail to take advantage of this opportunity, the region could once again descend into terror and violence -- and possibly even a third Intifada.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is already urging Israel to make further concessions. "Everyone has compassion for what the Israelis are going through right now, but it can't stop with the Gaza Strip," Rice said, commenting on the withdrawal of Jewish settlers. Palestinians in the West Bank would certainly agree with Rice's assessment.

Ariel Sharon, however, believes that the Palestinians owe the Israelis something in return for their willingness to withdraw from Gaza, that the Palestinian authorities should fight terrorism even more energetically: "If you extend your hand to us in peace, we will respond with an olive branch. But if you choose fire instead, we will respond even more decisively than before."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is pursuing a non-violent approach, unlike his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. For Abbas, terror from within his own ranks has seriously damaged the Palestinian cause. The extremists, with whom he was able to negotiate a cease-fire, have remained quiet until now. But even Abbas's supporters doubt whether the cease-fire will last beyond the withdrawal of the settlers.



AP
"A victory for the resistance:" Members of the Islamic Jihad movement celebrate the withdrawal of Israeli settlers.
The Islamists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad already outmatch the official Palestinian security forces with their combined firepower. To demonstrate their power, these holy warriors held a parade of uniformed recruits to their supposedly 40,000-strong "People's Army," armed with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, in the stadium of the Jabaliya refugee camp last week. The high point of the military show was the simulated storming of a Jewish settlement.

Speaking in pompous, combative prose, hardliners praised the victims of the Intifada, saying that the blood of the martyrs was "not shed in vain." These extremists are celebrating the Israeli withdrawal as a "victory for the resistance movement" and are openly calling for "escalation of the holy war."

West Bank, the next battlefield

The extremists say that the next battlefield will be the West Bank, where 250,000 Jewish settlers remain. But they could also be targeting Israelis on their own soil, as Hamas' declaration of war seems to suggest: "Zionists, leave our country."

Ismail Abu Midein rejects these calls to violence. The 41-year-old farmer living on the outskirts of Gaza City dreams of a peaceful future for Palestine. His own goals are modest: He plans to return to his own land where, until four years ago, he grew tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. Because a large part of his 120-hectare farm (about 296 acres) had bordered on the nearby Jewish settlement of Nezarim only 800 meters away, his productive fields, together with wells and irrigation equipment, were bulldozed by the Israeli military and declared a military security zone. Nevertheless, Midein, the father of eight children, has no hard feelings against the occupiers who are now withdrawing. "We are neighbors and we can live together in peace," he says, adding, "what we want is life in peace and security."

His sentiments are echoed by many of the 1.4 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Exhausted by Israeli tanks and armed assaults, embittered by the arbitrary nature of house searches and roadblocks, but also by the attacks launched by their own militias, most Palestinians long for normalcy, freedom of movement, wages and food.

Desperately seeking economic stability

"Political stability will only return here when there is hope for affluence," says Siad al-Bandak. An electrical engineer, educated in the eastern German city of Dresden, who now works for Abbas as his minister of tourism: "We need open border crossings, a sea port and an airport." But just how open Israel will allow its borders to be remains unclear. "The free movement of imports and exports must be guaranteed," demands Finance Minister Masin Sunukrut.

The Palestinian economy is still in desperate straits, at least for now. Both Turkey and China have shown interest in developing an industrial park. The G-8 countries have also pledged up to $3 billion in reconstruction aid, and the United Arab Emirates even announced a $100 million gift for the construction of a completely new city.

But the only concrete effort to create work to date involves the removal of 80,000 tons of rubble -- the bulldozed remains of the houses and warehouses in the Jewish settlements. The plan is to carefully separate and recycle concrete, bricks and wood. "At least it will create some work for our trucking companies," says Sunukrut.

Removal of the debris could take a while, perhaps until early next year or even longer. Of course, Abd Al-Hakim Awad, the leader of the Fatah Youth Organization, doesn't plan to wait that long with his festival: "We'll just celebrate over the ruins of the Israelis if we have to."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan