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| By: Associated Press |
| Published: July 30, 2005 |
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The Israeli military commander for the Gaza Strip admitted in a television interview Friday that he would rather not be carrying out the upcoming withdrawal from the area, but pledged to complete the mission "with determination."
"If you would ask me whether I would choose to do this, the answer is no, no. But at the end of the day, no one can choose or sway his fate, not his and not the country's," Maj. Gen Dan Harel told Channel 10 television.
Israel plans on uprooting all 21 settlements in Gaza, and four small communities in the West Bank, forcing nearly 9,000 Jewish settlers from their home. The operation, expected to last about a month, is a formidable challenge for the army, which is preparing for the possibility of violence by both Palestinian militants and Israeli extremists.
Harel said the army is preparing for "every case scenario" and pledged to avoid a repeat of the 1982 evacuation of Yamit bloc of settlements in the Sinai, which Israel returned to Egypt as part of a peace accord. Protesters refused to leave and clashed with soldiers, and images of the protesters being carried away on stretchers and in cages remain painful for many Israelis.
"We will carry this out with determination because otherwise ... it's the end of democracy," Harel said in an address to soldiers shown on the program. "When the country can't fulfill its legal democratic decisions, which were agreed upon according to the rules of the game we agreed to live by, it's the end of the country." |
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