Kim Bullimore
Despite mass rallies, acid attacks on police and troops, and threats of suicide by fanatical right-wing Israeli settlers, Israel began the implementation of its Gaza Strip disengagement plan on August 17, deploying about 20,000 police and troops to 20 illegal settler-colonies.
Although the colonies have been infiltrated by at least 2000 ultra-Zionists from the West Bank and Israel — many of them teenagers, from the Chabad and the banned Kach and Kahane Chai movements — the Israeli security forces largely applied a "kid gloves" approach to them.
During the first day of the operation, the Israeli military arrested around 200 settlers and their supporters. However, as in the weeks leading up to disengagement, most of those arrested were released within a few hours, thus allowing them to resume their campaign against disengagement.
Israeli officials told reporters on the evening of August 18 that 80% of the Gaza Strip's 8500 illegal Israeli settlers had left or been evicted and 18 out of the 21 settlements had been emptied.
By August 19, Israeli officials claimed they had defeated the last bastions of resistance to the Gaza pull-out, after Israeli police and troops stormed synagogues in two illegal settlements — Gaza's oldest settlement, Kfar Darom, where 1500 ultra-Zionist protesters had supported the 80 resident families, and the largest settlement, Neve Dekalim.
On August 17, Asher Weissgan, a resident of the illegal West Bank settlement of Shvut Rachel, opened fire on Palestinian labourers, killing four and wounding two others near the illegal industrial settlement of Shiloh.
Weissgan, an opponent of the Gaza disengagement plan, was a driver with the industrial settlement, transporting Palestinian labourers out of the Shiloh at the conclusion of each workday.
The terrorist attack carried out by Weissgan was the second such attack in two weeks. On August 4, Eden Natan Zada, an illegal settler, military deserter and opponent of the Gaza disengagement, fired into a bus carrying Palestinians in northern Israel. Four Palestinians were killed and a dozen others were wounded.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, August 24, 2005.
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