Options were running out yesterday for thousands of Gaza-pullout opponents stranded in a shrinking protest camp in southern Israel and blocked by security forces from marching to the coastal strip to reinforce Jewish settlers there.
With the standoff in its third day, conflicting statements from pullout resisters reflected a wide discrepancy between the rhetoric of resolve and the practical fact that security forces were calling the tune.
Settler leaders were urging supporters to start marching toward Gaza, while at the same time acknowledging that flooding Gaza with protesters to tie up evacuation forces wasn't an option.
Twenty thousand soldiers and police were mobilized in southern Israel on Monday to prevent pullout opponents from defying a military ban on entering Gaza to help the 8,500 settlers there who have vowed to resist evacuation next month.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 protesters were camped out in the Kfar Maimon farming village near Gaza yesterday morning after spending two days and two nights in suffocating heat, estimated Nissim Shaham, commander of the Negev Desert police district.
Settler leaders issued a call for reinforcements yesterday, and said the march toward the main settlement bloc of Gush Katif would resume that evening.
"We are on our way to Gush Katif," Pinchas Wallerstein said. "It will take as long as it takes. We don't condone the use of violence against police and soldiers ... but we have patience and we will wait and wait and wait."
Dozens of newcomers walked several kilometers to bypass police roadblocks set up to prevent protesters from reaching the area.
Eliada Yisrael, 49, reached Kfar Maimon on Tuesday from his settlement home in the Golan Heights, a plateau Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war.
"The atmosphere here is good. People have hope," Yisrael said. "We want this to be legitimate without violent confrontations with the security forces, that's our aim."
But the head of the settlers' umbrella group, Bentsi Lieberman, suggested the crowd would continue to thin significantly.
"We will certainly leave a core to continue operational moves," Lieberman said. "The rest will leave to re-energize and go to their Sabbath dinners, and await orders from us so we will be able to see what effective measures to take going forward."
There were other signs the protesters were looking for a way out. Yitzhak Levy, a lawmaker and settler leader, said he had suggested to the protest leadership that they reach an agreement with police to march an additional 8km and go home, giving up on the goal of reaching Gaza.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS