NETIVOT (Israel), July 18: More than 20,000 opponents of Israel’s Gaza Strip pullout held a mass protest on Monday in what has been billed as a bid to break into settlements and impede next month’s withdrawal. The swelling crowd, dominated by religious Jews opposed to the withdrawal of Israelis from Gaza on ideological grounds, was matched by 20,000 soldiers and police seeking to contain a protest the authorities have called illegal.
Young and old decked out in orange – the colour that has come to symbolize the settlers struggle against the so-called disengagement — sang pslams and clapped along to patriotic music in between addresses from rabbis.
The Netivot march in southern Israel came with thousands of Israeli troops poised for a possible ground assault in the Gaza Strip to end Palestinian rocket attacks.
“If they will not stop it and the terrorist organisations will continue terror... then you will agree with me that we will have to do something,” said Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert when asked about the military build-up.
A 15-year-old Palestinian teenager was killed by Israeli gunfire at a checkpoint in southern Gaza, Palestinian medical sources said.
On the Netivot rally, Mr Olmert said Israeli security would take “the necessary measures” to deal with any “massive violation of the basic ground rules of democracy”.
He said radical opponents would be accountable for any trouble or possible fatalities, after organizers called for a 15-kilometre (nine-mile) march on the border crossing with the Gaza Strip to reach sealed-off Jewish settlements.
“Those who are trying to prevent the government from fulfilling its policies and commitments are responsible for any improprieties or any fatalities, hopefully not, that might take place,” he told CNN.
Young people paraded T-shirts emblazened with anti-pullout slogans such as “Jews don’t expel Jews”.
“No power in the world will expel us from our land,” said Israel’s former chief Sephardic rabbi, Mordechai Eliahou, to mass applause.
“It is our land, the promised land. I firmly believe that a divine force will halt the withdrawal,” David Shuraqi, a 40-year-old Yeshiva student.—AFP
