| ISRAEL: Summary of Editorials from the Hebrew Press |
Haaretz comments: "The faster the evacuation of Gaza moves, the closer the transfer of the focus to the northern West Bank becomes, where two of the four settlements are still populated. It is enticing to believe that the success in the Gaza Strip so far can be easily repeated in the northern West Bank. But Israel Defense Forces commanders in the area should be heeded as they warn against complacence. In Homesh and Sa-Nur, where only a few dozen families remain, together with a few hundred infiltrators, may lurk danger to the army and the police that will require determined legal and operational action... Even more than in the Gaza Strip, the settlements of the northern West Bank are wide open in two worrisome ways - to infiltrators coming to strengthen the opposition to evacuation, and to Palestinian villages, which the infiltrators might invade to kill, destroy and engender a violent response. The IDF failed to isolate the Gaza Strip from Israel and allowed in thousands of infiltrators, which endangered the operation although it did not stop it. The IDF must immediately deploy the forces that finish their task in the south to create a double barrier: between Homesh and Sa-Nur and the extremist settlements nearby, and between them and the Palestinian villages. The enforcement of the law on those who are breaking it by their very presence in Homesh and Sa-Nur can be neither limp nor lenient. In the coming conflict between the army and police and hundreds or thousands of zealots, there is no room for restraint or forbearance."
The Jerusalem Post writes: "Israelis have always been proud of the young men and women, their children, upon whose shoulders so much responsibility rests for the defense of this nation. Scandalously, some disengagement opponents, including too many of the settler movement's leadership, were banking on wholesale refusal by the security forces. Some of these leaders would say they were against refusing orders, but told soldiers and police they should say "I can't do it," which is, of course, the same thing. These efforts, along with pummeling the forces with every manner of abuse and psychological warfare, failed utterly, to the great credit of those young men and women and the training they received... We can only hope that those in the few remaining settlements to be evacuated will contemplate the positive and negative examples of the past few days and draw some conclusions. In the coming days, there is still a chance to shift the balance of images seared into our collective memories from those of the imported hooligans on the roof of the Kfar Darom synagogue, to the mournful embraces of soldiers and residents that in reality were more typical of this traumatic operation."
Yediot Aharonot notes a change in the organizations (the IDF, Israel Police, and various government ministries) which were formerly complicit in settlement activity, not all of it legal (as documented in Talia Sasson’s report): They are now at the forefront of settlement evacuation. However, the editors fault the government decision-making process that led up to the Disengagement Plan and its implementation.
Hatzofeh asserts that, “The destruction of Gush Katif stems from…Sharon’s desire to rid himself of the criminal indictment prepared against him by the State Attorney’s Office and from the desire of his son, Omri, to set up a casino after the one in Jericho collapsed,” and adds, “In truth, there is no other reason.”
Source: Noticias
Monday, 22 August 2005
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