Gaza settlers abandon march
2005-07-21 14:09
Jerusalem - Frustrated opponents of Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza next month, trapped for three days in a farming village, gave up their goal of a mass march into Gaza.
Settlers' council head Bentsi Lieberman admitted defeat early on Thursday, with determined soldiers preventing thousands of protesters from leaving for the Gaza settlements.
He said: "We'll get in little by little" instead of a mass march. He was speaking to more than 10 000 followers trapped in the village of Kfar Maimon, 20km from Gaza.
He said acknowledging that the demonstration was planned for three days, "I know many of you have plans, and some of you must leave, but I appeal to all who can stay to remain here".
Fruitless negotiations with cops
Buses took some demonstrators away, but others hunkered down for a third night under the stars, certain in their faith that the pull-out would be foiled, but uncertain how that would come about.
Thousands of settlers and their backers, most of them Orthodox Jewish teenagers and young adults with children, milled around the main gate of Kfar Maimon on Wednesday as their leaders and rabbis negotiated fruitlessly with police and soldiers.
The setback was critical for the settlement movement, which had successfully defended itself against its critics for more than three decades, wielding political power far beyond its numbers and activating politicians - including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in an earlier incarnation - to build and expand settlements throughout the Gaza and West Bank.
The settlers number about 240 000, less than four percent of Israel's population.
Dangerous precedent
Sharon decided to remove all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the West Bank, uprooting 9 000 - but settler leaders see it as a dangerous precedent.
The settler activists, dominated by Orthodox Jews, also reject relinquishing control of any part of the biblical Promised Land.
But, the mass march on Gaza, which started on Monday, might turn into their Waterloo - the setback marking the beginning of the end of their power.
Sharon welcomes the vote
On Wednesday, Israel's parliament once again endorsed the pull-out by a wide margin, defeating a proposal to postpone it for a year. The vote was 69-41.
Sharon welcomed the vote. He said: "It proved that the government, the Knesset and the public support the disengagement."
With less than a month to go before the withdrawal gets under way, the once highly organised protest movement was becoming increasingly chaotic and desperate.
- AP