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Young settlers ride on a truck carrying belongings as residents prepare for the evacuation of the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip on Monday. (AP)
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners August 22, 2005 |
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| Exodus of Netzarim residents and supporters, with torah scrolls and a menorah that once graced their synagogue. (AP) |
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The last Jewish residents to be evacuated from Gaza boarded armored buses and left for Israel on Monday, after a farewell march behind Torah scrolls and a massive candelabra.
The residents left Netzarim in a caravan of buses with Israeli flags poking out of darkened bulletproof windows and private cars and trucks loaded with belongings. A community leader sat in the front of the first bus clutching a Torah.
By late afternoon Hagai Dotan, the police commander overseeing evacuation said that all of the settlers were on their way to Jerusalem.
"It's tougher to see them go quietly, not fighting," Dotan said, watching the tearful and resigned settlers board the convoy.
The settlers were driving to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest shrine, and from there to temporary homes in Hashmonaim, on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Around midday, hundreds crowded the synagogue for final prayers. After the ceremony, the residents chanted and prayed as they walked behind a Jewish candelabra, or menorah, and several Torah scrolls in a farewell tour.
To see video footage of the removal, as captured by Ynetnews.com, click here.
The secretary of Netzarim, Eliahu Uzan, said the community was resigned to its fate.
"We know what will happen," Uzan told Channel 1 TV. "We have come to terms with this, unless there is an exceptional miracle. We know that apparently tonight we won't be there."
Some residents found solace in continuing with their everyday lives. Workers poured cement to create a foundation for the roof of the Meshulami family's new house.
"As long as the state of Israel hasn't left here, we need to continue with the little bit of life that we have left," Uzan said. "We just have to continue."
The community, he says, deplored the notion of clashes with expulsion troops.
"In this community, there was never violence, and there never will be," Uzan said.
Three youths who had come to Netzarim to resist the evacuation were arrested Sunday in a possession of ninjas, oil, barbed wire and paint, the police commander in charge of the evacuation, Hagai Doton, said in Netzarim on Monday.
Netzarim, on the outskirts of Gaza City, has been the target of frequent attacks by Palestinian militants and was one of the coastal strip's most hardline and isolated settlements.
Palestinians living near Netzarim said Monday they were counting the hours to see the settlers go.
"They are very bad neighbors," said Saadi Helo, 44, a Palestinian farmer. "They turned our lives into nightmares. They occupied the land, leveled our farms, demolished our houses, killed our beloved and spared no effort to attack us."
As troops prepared to wrap up the Israeli withdrawals, displaced settlers from Gaza were setting up two tent camps just outside the coastal strip Monday to protest what they said was the government's failure to provide alternate housing, Army Radio said. Sharon has called the establishment of tent camps a political ploy to create sympathy, and insists there's ample compensation and housing for evacuated settlers.
The AP contributed to this report.
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