The Israeli government is considering moving up its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip next month, senior government officials said yesterday, after a three-day mass protest against the pullout tied up tens of thousands of security forces.
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's point man on the Gaza evacuation, said he would favorably consider moving up the pullout in light of the protest. Israel sent 20,000 police and soldiers to block the protesters from marching to the Gaza settlements to reinforce the settlers there.
"This confrontation saps a great deal of energy, disrupts the lives of all of the country's residents, doesn't lead to any advantage. So I would definitely weigh [an earlier withdrawal] favorably," Olmert told Israel Radio.
PHOTO: AP
Israeli officials might discuss moving up the pullout with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was due to arrive in the region later yesterday, according to another senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made.
The evacuation originally was to have begun in the middle of this month, but was pushed back to the middle of next month, ostensibly out of consideration for the religious Jews observing a three-week mourning period -- beginning Sunday -- for the destruction of the biblical Jewish Temples. Critics said the pullout was delayed because the government was far behind in its preparations.
If pullout opponents "think these are appropriate days for protest ... I don't think the government has to act differently," Olmert said.
The senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were no legal obstacles to moving up the pullout and that the matter would be discussed by Israeli officials, and possibly with Rice. But the lack of legal barriers doesn't mean the withdrawal will be moved up, he said.
"Legally, there is no problem. But there are other problems -- logistic problems, coordination [with the Palestinians], evaluation of the situation to minimize friction, and Palestinian terror," the official said.
The standoff between security forces and pullout opponents began on Monday after as many as 30,000 protesters converged on the southern Israeli farming village of Kfar Maimon with the goal of marching into nearby Gaza, defying a government order banning non-residents from entering.
But with rings of soldiers and police preventing them from leaving for the Gaza settlements, where they had hoped to reinforce the thousands of settlers living there and make the pullout more complex, pullout opponents gave up their protest.
By yesterday morning, only an estimated 1,000 to 2,000 remained, police spokesman Avi Zelba said.
The fizzled protest was a severe setback for the settlement movement, but settler leader Bentsi Lieberman said early yesterday that withdrawal opponents would infiltrate Gaza "little by little" instead of in a mass march.
Scores of pullout opponents have been quietly smuggled into Gaza's Gush Katif settlement bloc in the middle of the night in recent days and have been moving into new protest tent camps. The Haaretz newspaper reported yesterday that 600 pullout opponents made it into Gaza since the area was declared a closed military zone last week.
"[The] battle will continue in one format or another," settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein told Israel Radio.
"We won't stop for a minute trying to get into Gush Katif," Wallerstein said.
Zelba said 250 anti-pullout activists were arrested overnight -- most for trying to breach the closed military zone, and a few for trying to cut the fence around the territory.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS