Israel puts pressure on Palestinians after pull-out

NOW that Israel has redrawn its own borders before the eyes of the world, completing with dazzling speed its pullout from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, it has this message for the Palestinians: “We’ve dealt with our extremists, now you deal with yours.”

And the Palestinians are telling Israel: “You’ve proven that withdrawing is feasible, so do not stop.”

Both Israeli and Palestinian officials said the evacuation opens a rare opportunity for renewing talks. But militant violence, chaos in Gaza, Israeli politics and big differences on the issues of statehood and borders bode poorly for peace.

On Tuesday, optimism outweighed the misgivings.

“This is a momentous and very important point in history for us,” said Rafiq Husseini, the Palestinian presidential chief of staff. “But now we want to start building.” Once Palestinians begin reining in their militants, said Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Gideon Meir, “we can start to talk about the final status of the territories”.

It took the Israelis just six days to clear residents out of all 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank.

With blazing speed, Israeli bulldozers are demolishing the 2,800 homes left behind after Israel cleared the Gaza Strip of its Jewish residents.

Israel and the Palestinians are in agreement that destruction is the best option: the Palestinians need space for parks, tourism and tall apartment buildings in crowded Gaza, and Israel doesn’t want to see militants celebrating on the rooftops of the abandoned homes.

By yesterday, more than 700 structures had been reduced to rubble.

Palestinians remain suspicious of Israeli intentions, with settlement construction forging ahead in the West Bank even as huge bulldozers demolish the remains of Jewish Gaza.

Mr Husseini said the Palestinian Israelis hotly debate why Israel’s Prime minister Ariel Sharon, after spending most of his career as the champion of Jewish settlements, suddenly became the first Israeli leader to dismantle them in the West Bank and Gaza.

Some believe he suddenly woke up to the reality that Israel cannot hope to be both a Jewish and democratic state if it holds on to the West Bank and Gaza and the millions of Palestinians who, according to one recent study, already outnumber the Jews.

The study said that by placing Gaza’s 1.3 million Palestinians outside its boundaries, Israel has bought itself another 20 years of a solid Jewish majority inside the lands it controls.

A Jew stabbed by a Palestinian in the Old City of Jerusalem died of his wounds last night.

Another Jew was seriously wounded, police and rescue workers said. Police said the knifeman was a young Palestinian and called the incident a terror attack.

The assailant escaped. The victims were young ultra-Orthodox Jews.