Israeli troops moved out of the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday morning, ending a four-day operation meant to stop what the military said were continued attempts by Palestinian militants to fire homemade rockets and mortars at Israeli towns.
Israeli infantry and armor rolled away from the town of Beit Hanoun and the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp shortly after daybreak, witnesses said. In fighting there, soldiers killed three Palestinians and destroyed more homes and fruit groves.
PHOTO: AFP
Settler leaders turned up the rhetoric on Friday against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, warning of civil war if Israel gives up the Gaza Strip and a small part of the West Bank.
However, Sharon was unde-terred, saying he would go ahead with his plan despite vociferous and potentially violent opposition.
Settler leaders charged that Sharon does not have a mandate to carry out the withdrawal, and said one consequence would be widespread refusal by soldiers to carry out orders for the mass eviction of settlers. Under Sharon's plan, about 8,500 settlers would be removed from their homes.
"The other (likely outcome) is definitely a type of civil war," Eliezer Hasdai, a regional settlement council chief, told Israel Radio.
Another prominent settler said Sharon's actions were Nazi-like, in an echo of slurs against Premier Yitzhak Rabin in the weeks before his 1995 assassination by an ultranationalist Jew.
"In the last century, the only ones who expelled Jews because they were Jews were the Nazis," Haggai Ben-Artzi, brother-in-law of finance minister and former premier Benjamin Netanyahu, told the radio. "To any one who does this I say this is a Nazi, anti-Semitic act."
Sharon, however, vowed that he would not be deterred.
"This plan will go ahead regardless, period," Sharon told the Jerusalem Post in an interview published on Friday.
Sharon also said Israel can continue building in large West Bank settlement blocs without US opposition if it does so quietly.
While the US-backed ``road map'' peace plan calls for a settlement freeze, Israel believes it has tacit American approval for building within these blocs, which it wants to keep in any future peace deal.
US diplomats say publicly that Washington remains committed to the road map. However, Israel's announcement last month that it would build 1,000 new homes in settlements near Jerusalem drew only a muted US response.
"Yes, we can continue building in the large blocs," Sharon said when asked whether he had a quiet understanding with the US on limited settlement construction.
The issue of Jewish settlement construction is a major irritant in the complex relations among Israel, the US and the Palestinians, who seek all of the West Bank and Gaza for their state and demand that all settlements be removed.
Some Israeli politicians on Friday accused the settlers of deliberately stoking the flames of violent conflict in order to block the withdrawal.
"They have a feeling that their holy war sanctifies all means. It does not," Justice Minister Yosef Lapid told Israel Radio.
"If they rebel or incite they will be brought to justice like any criminal ... and will not be forgiven for causing a civil war," he said.
An order barring Palestinians from Israel went into effect at dawn on Friday and was expected to last through several Jewish holidays, ending in October.
Thousands of Palestinians cross into Israel each day. Military sources said humanitarian cases would still be permitted into Israel for medical treatment and other pressing needs. Also, the officials said, travel between the Palestinian towns would be unaffected.
In Friday's Jabaliya fighting, a man described by Hamas as one of its senior members was killed when the army hit militant positions on the edge of the refugee camp with rockets from a helicopter and tank fire, the army and witnesses said.
Two other Palestinians were killed during the day, including an 18-year-old hit by a tank shell, local medical staff said. The military said troops fired at two armed men, one aiming an anti-tank missile. The army could not confirm if the targets were killed.
More than 50 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were wounded in the Jabaliya fighting, Palestinians and the army said.
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