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Children dress as soldiers and police officers. Signs express love for the potential "expellers" and urge them to reconsider. (AP)
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| By Jerusalem Newswire August 12, 2005 |
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| Rabin Square fills up in what may have been the largest public protest ever in Israeli history. (AP) |
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In what organizers called the largest expression of public protest ever held in Israel, hundreds of thousands of Israelis flooded the coastal city of Tel Aviv Thursday, calling on its residents to stand with them in opposing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to force Jewish families from their homes and surrender Jewish land to the Arabs.
Boarding city buses and saturating shopping malls with their presence and the orange color of their cause, they appealed to the people of the largely secular Mediterranean city to help stop the "disengagement" plan that is set for implementation in just three days.
After hours of tireless effort, a crowd police said numbered at least 200,000 but organizers put at 300,000 poured into the city's Rabin Square, showing the strength of their size and the determination of their will to withstand what former Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has called the "evil" expulsion edict.
Speakers at the rally called on Sharon to hold a plebiscite on the plan and to hold new elections so the nation could make known its position. If he did so, the demonstrators said, they would honor the will of the people.
Thursday's rally capped weeks of concerted anti-pullout activities organized by the Yesha Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. (Yesha means "salvation" in Hebrew.)
But while a number of antagonistic newspapers suggested that the demonstration marked the end of the anti-disengagement effort, Yesha leaders turned the event into a massive briefing to announce Operation Orange Dawn and prime the masses for action on "D-Day."
Given the extent of the resolve shown by tens of thousands of these Israelis in their efforts over the past months, it appears that enormous numbers of people -- men, women and children -- will try and make their way to Gaza Sunday night and Monday.
They were instructed to go to the Gaza Strip border, by road and on foot, and by sheer weight of their numbers prevent the security forces from carrying out the plan.
Strict instructions were given that violence should at no time be employed against police and soldiers who may try to prevent them from reaching the Gaza crossings.
Those unable to make that journey have been called to set up a tent city outside the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem.
"Disengagement will not be carried out. We will not allow Jews to be expelled from our land," cried Yesha Council Chairman Bentzi Lieberman, triggering a roar of agreement from the multitude that resounded through downtown Tel Aviv.
Additional efforts have included numerous calls to prayer and fasting, the forming of a human chain from the Western Wall to Gush Katif in Gaza, the massive rallies in Kfar Maimon and Sderot/Ofakim, an unprecedented prayer gathering at the Western Wall on Wednesday night and the massive but peaceful demonstration in Tel Aviv Thursday.
"The phenomenon of people crying out against the expulsion program, day after day, week after week, is unprecedented in the history of Israeli democracy," Yesha Council Chairman Bentzi Lieberman said.
But while residents of these cities would not have been able to shut out the cries of their fellow Israelis, reports indicate that those appeals, like the ones that have gone up from millions of throats in the past few months of non-stop anti-disengagement activity, will have fallen largely on deaf ears.
Nonetheless, according to a report by IMRA (Independent Media Review and Analysis) Friday morning, a poll carried out earlier this week indicates that up to 92 percent of Israelis have not been affected by the massive outcry.
More prayer gatherings are planned for Sunday, the 9th of Av (August 14), the day the nation of Israel mourns the destruction of its temples and remembers numerous other calamities that have befallen the Jewish people through time.
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