Israelis protest against Gaza withdrawal

Tens of thousands of Israelis linked hands today in a human chain in a protest against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to dismantle the Jewish settlements and withdraw the army from the Gaza Strip.

Organisers expected up to 150,000 Israelis to participate in the chain, a figure that would match a pro-withdrawal demonstration in Tel Aviv two months ago.

The mass turnout on both sides illustrated the passion and deep division that the issue of settlements arouses among the Israeli people.

The chain began at Nissanit, a settlement in northern Gaza settlement, and was to stretch along highways to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a distance of more than 55 miles.

“We came here to protest the program of expelling Jews from their land,” said Avraham Yitzhaki, 54, from the Gaza settlement of Ganei Tal.

“We are all holding hands to return to the land of Israel,” said Yitzhaki’s wife Rachel, standing at the Yad Mordechai junction about three miles north of the Gaza Strip with several thousand other demonstrators.

In Jerusalem’s Old City, religious Jews prayed at Judaism’s holiest shrine, then joined a chain that extended from the Western Wall, through an Israeli security barrier and up the stairs into the narrow lanes of the Jewish Quarter. Before clasping hands, demonstrators danced, clapped and sang patriotic songs.

Scores of buses were parked along the route, as demonstrators took their places along the side of the road and waited for the signal from organisers, using bullhorns, to join hands.

Most wore the outward signs of Orthodox Jews. Many waved Israeli flags and banners condemning the disengagement plan.

Police mobilised thousands of officers, reinforced by more than 1,000 private security guards, to patrol the route, deal with snarled traffic and prevent any attempt to create a disturbance. Motorists were advised to take alternate routes.

Sharon’s plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements by the end of September 2005, which he announced last December, drew such fierce opposition from hard-liners that he fired two critics in his own Cabinet, forcing him into negotiations for a new governing coalition.

It also infuriated Jewish settlers who looked to Sharon as their champion through decades of political fighting over building and expanding settlements in the territories seized from Jordan, Egypt and Syria in the 1967 Mideast war.

Many Israelis see the settlements as entrenching Israel’s claim on what they call the birthright of the Jewish people to the lands of the bible. About 240,000 Jews live among 3.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Other Israelis believe relinquishing the settlements is a precondition for reaching peace with the Palestinians. Polls show a majority in favour of Sharon’s plan to abandon the Gaza Strip, which has less historical significance than the West Bank.

The first person on the chain in Nissanit was Shamir Yitzhak, who was evacuated from the Gaza Strip when Egypt captured the area in the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948.

Yitzhak’s granddaughter, 6-year-old Yael Better, who lives in the Gaza settlement of Neve Dekalim, was ending the chain at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.