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.
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