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May 21, 2004/Sivan 1 5764, Vol. 56, No.35
Gaza Strip issue heats up
DINA KRAFT AND
DAN BARON
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
TEL AVIV - If Israel already has one foot out of Gaza, the other appears to be digging in deeper.
After losing 13 soldiers to Palestinian militants last week in the Gaza Strip, seven of them in the southern Gaza refugee camp of Rafah, the Israel Defense Forces began to mount counterterrorist operations and widen its security zone near Rafah by leveling Palestinian residents' homes.
On May 18, Israeli forces killed at least 15 Palestinians with helicopter missile strikes against terrorist targets in Rafah. Six Palestinians also were killed May 17 in fighting with Israeli forces. Israeli security sources said the raid could last days and was aimed at militants who smuggle weapons through tunnels to Rafah from nearby Egypt.
Some Palestinians fled the refugee camp as U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the European Union issued condemnations of Israel's actions, particularly the house demolitions.
On May 16, Israel's High Court of Justice reversed a temporary ban on demolishing the Palestinian homes, saying the demolitions could proceed if they were justified on security grounds.
The struggle over Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip made it to the streets of Tel Aviv over the weekend. Waving Israeli flags high into the night sky and holding banners with the slogan "The Majority Decides: Get Out of Gaza and Start Talking," some 120,000 people filled the city's main square and surrounding sidewalks.
Observers noted the event could mark a turning point in the national debate over Israel's presence in the Gaza Strip.
Both developments suggest that Gaza may continue to be the flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, just a few weeks after members of the Likud Party rejected Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the strip - and at the end of a week in which 13 Israeli soldiers and more than 30 Palestinians were killed there.
"We will not allow Palestinian terrorism to attain the capabilities it aspires to, which would threaten the heart of the nation even after our disengagement from Gaza," Sharon said.
But given that Sharon's proposed removal of troops and settlers from Gaza has been stalled by Israeli right wingers - to the embarrassment of the Bush administration which backed him - political sources said the prime minister may exercise some caution in Rafah.
"The unfolding violence in the Gaza Strip is troubling and underscores the need for all parties to seize every oppor-tunity for peace," President Bush said in a speech May 18 at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
"We know that Israel has a right for self-defense, but the kind of action they are taking in Rafah, with the destruction of Palestinian homes, we oppose," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said May 16 during a visit to Jordan.
Sharon, a longtime cham-pion of Israel's settler movement, made a recent reversal by calling for a withdrawal from Gaza, the sandy strip of land between Israel and Egypt that is home to some 7,000 Jewish settlers and about 1.5 million Palestinians.
In a strange political twist, a rally that included dovish Israeli leaders backed the Gaza withdrawal plan proposed by Sharon, long a villainized figure among the Israeli left.
Speakers criticized the Likud Party's May 2 vote against the pullout plan.
Citing recent polls showing an overwhelming majority of Israelis in favor of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, Shimon Peres, leader of the Labor Party, said, "80 percent of Israelis want peace and 1 percent is trying to block it. We won't allow them" to decide.
"You are the majority of the country, you are defending your home," Peres told the cheering crowd.
Among the speakers were Yossi Beilin, leader of a new political party called Yahad, and Ami Ayalon, the former director of Israel's Shin Bet security service. Both men have drafted alternate peace proposals for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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