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.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS