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IDF soldiers had prepared for tens of thousands of anti-disengagement protesters. "We will do everything in our power in order to protect the protestors," said one IDF source. "But we will not tolerate any lawbreaking or public disturbances." (AP)
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| By israelinsider staff and partners April 27, 2005 |
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| 50,000 peoples came to express solidarity with the residents of Gaza threatened with expulsion. (AP) |
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Early in the day, a Palestinian gunmen fired a mortar shell at anti-disengagement marchers. The rocket landed a few dozen meters from participants, lightly wounding one IDF soldier with shrapnel.
The rocket struck as the march filed past the Mouassi, the Palestinian area in the heart of Gush Katif.
The army, along with the IAF (which will provide helicopter accompaniment) beefed up its forces in the Gush Katif area of southern Gaza ahead of today's mass anti-disengagement rally, dubbed 'We will be there' (meaning they will be in Gaza on the day IDF forces arrive to begin the withdrawal) which has predicted a turnout of some 100,000 protestors.
Crowd estimates late on Wednesday fell far short of the figure, with police assessing the total number at 40,000 and organizers setting the total at 60,000.
MK Effi Eitam told the crowd that the pullout plan could be thwarted if everyone in attendance made their way to the Kissufim junction, east of central Gaza, on the day the evacuation is slated to take place.
"If they close the roads to us, we'll walk on dirt roads, in fields, in groves," Eitam said. "If a million and a half people get up and go, it will be impossible to carry out this plan. It's impossible to evacuate a nation."
The protestors, whose objective is to persuade the government that it will be impossible to go ahead with the withdrawal this summer, will arrive at the Gaza settlement bloc aboard some 600 buses (70 of which will hail from Tel Aviv alone) hired by the Yesha Council and the campaign against the withdrawal.
Yesha leader Pinchas Wallerstein had said earlier "every politician will have to take into account the meaning of the numbers who arrive in Gush Katif." The anti-disengagement forces are predicting that having to arrest tens of thousands of protesters will be too daunting for the government to go ahead with the evacuation. The army and police are making plans to prevent those tens of thousands from ever getting into the settlement bloc.
MK Arieh Eldad called for "civil disobedience" -- "we will not be screws in the destruction machine" he said. "Without comparing this to the Holocaust -- then we asked 'Why was the world silent?' Now, we are the world."
He called for massive demonstrations to shut down the country. "If Jews will not be permitted to travel the roads of Israel, no one will," he said. "Jews do not expel Jews in Israel.
Eldad, who has been marching from Samaria to Gaza in the past 13 days to protest the pullout plan, he said: "In this effort we do not have the privilege of losing. A historic injustice is on our shoulders -- we are fighting for our homes."
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