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Heroes and blame go round in Gaza heartbreak

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published August 21, 2005

JERUSALEM - Some observations about Israel's withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and four small areas of the West Bank, ending 38 years of occupation and paving the way for a Palestinian nation.

ISRAELI SOLDIERS AND POLICE ACTED HEROICALLY: Imagine standing in full uniform in 95 degree temperatures and high humidity for hours on end.

Imagine that while you're standing there, people are screaming, cursing and spitting at you - so close you can smell their breath.

I don't know about you, but I'd have a hard time taking it for more than a few minutes. Yet Jewish security forces charged with evicting other Jews from their homes last week endured the abuse of their countrymen and women with amazing equanimity.

For every ugly scene of people being dragged out of homes and synagogues, there were a hundred more of soldiers and police acting with sympathy, respect and even tenderness. As a young male protester kicked at him, I saw a burly policeman holding his hand gently on the youth's head to make sure his yarmulke - the cap worn by religious Jews - didn't fall off.

As young women protesters left the synagogue where they had camped out for days, I saw female soldiers holding water to their lips, carrying their heavy backpacks, hugging them as though they were the closest of friends.

And in a typically poignant scene - with no cameras around to record it - three soldiers spent more than an hour consoling a man who had completely gone to pieces. Two held his hands and spoke soothingly while the third pressed cool cloths to the back of his neck to help calm him down.

Israeli soldiers and police have drawn a lot of criticism - some of it justified - for their rough treatment of Palestinians, including destruction of thousands of Palestinian homes. There was real concern security forces might overreact in confrontations with angry settlers and their supporters.

That the Gaza evacuation is almost complete with relatively little major violence so far is due in part to the training security forces received in handling resisters. But it is also due to the mutual respect between soldiers and citizens in a country where almost everyone serves in the army.

I found myself wondering: Would Americans be so polarized over the war in Iraq if more of us had done time in the military, or had close relatives serving now?

GAZA WAS NEVER A SURE THING: Even many Palestinians sympathize with settlers being wrenched from their homes. "It's hard to see someone leaving a house he's been in for 30 years," said Farid Hammovri, a Jerusalem shop owner. "But the (Palestinians) in Gaza live like animals - 20 people to a room - while the people in the settlements have big houses. It is right they should go."

Gaza's 1-million plus Palestinians have long chafed at the fact that fewer than 10,000 Jews used 18 percent of the land and had their own superior road network. In 2000, that resentment helped fuel the Palestinian uprising that killed more than 1,000 Israelis and convinced Prime Minister Ariel Sharon it was untenable to keep the Gaza settlements.

When they moved to Gaza, Jewish settlers knew, or arguably should have known, they would be living on disputed land that was captured from Arabs in the 1967 Mideast War and that might one day revert to Arab control. Indeed, some of the settlers evacuated from Gaza were the very same people who had been evacuated from Israeli settlements in the Sinai as part of the 1979 peace agreement with Egypt.

But Israeli commentators have heaped most of the blame on Sharon and others for encouraging the settlers in the first place.

"Israel's political leadership has failed its people since the 1967 war by neither pursuing, nor even articulating, a consistent vision of the strategic borders of this country," wrote David Horovitz in the Jerusalem Post.

"First we send Jews to live in the Sinai, then we pull them back. We send them to Gaza, then order them out. These are real people with real lives and real emotions, not political playthings."

GAZA WAS THE EASY PART: As harsh the rhetoric and as heartbreaking the images, removing 8,500 Jews from Gaza is nothing compared to what will happen if Israel ever decides to withdraw some or all of the 240,000 Jewish settlers still in the West Bank.

Although it is where Abraham and Isaac dug a well and made the "desert bloom," Gaza has never had the emotional or historical importance to religious Jews as "Judea and Samaria," their term for the West Bank. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week that "it cannot be Gaza only" - Israel will be under renewed pressure to remove some of the West Bank settlements that Palestinians say are impeding their chances of ever building a viable nation.

A startling statistic: To evacuate 8,500 Gaza Jews, it is taking 50,000 Israeli police and soldiers - more than a third of the U.S. troop strength in Iraq, a country of 29-million.

Writes Avraham Tal in the daily Ha'aretz: "Had the (Gaza) evacuation been carried out 15 years ago, its emotional and economic cost would have been far lower - a lesson to anyone who believes it is possible to continue to hold on to dozens of isolated settlements in Judea and Samaria."

Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 21, 2005, 00:51:14]