February 8, 2004
NO RED-LINING BEYOND THE GREEN LINE:
Gaza settlers, warned to pull up stakes, plan to dig in (Ilene R. Prusher, 2/09/04, CS Monitor)
The kumquat trees planted in the sand of their front yard are still flimsy and young.Roni and Efrat Bakshy, who planted themselves here two decades ago, insist they and their seven children will be picking the bittersweet orange fruit for years to come.
"I've been here for 20 years. I arranged every corner of this house. Every pipe, I know where it starts and where it leads. Every tree, I planted," says Roni Bakshy, a bearded man who serves on the settlement's religious council and performs ritual circumcisions.
But Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said last week that he has plans to evacuate the Bakshy family along with more than 7,500 other Jewish settlers in Gaza. That startling announcement - along with a new plan to alter the course of the separation wall through the West Bank - is apparently designed to extricate Israel unilaterally from the conflict with the Palestinians.
If the Bakshys are representative, Gaza settlers will not go quietly - if they go at all.
Good for them--there's no reason Palestine shouldn't have a Jewish population, just as Israel has Muslims. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 8, 2004 6:22 PM
Maybe it should, but I can think of at least one reason is won't.
Posted by: David Cohen at February 8, 2004 6:30 PMAs long as they don't then spend their time asking foreign governments (like Israel's) to protect them or to promote an agenda contrary to the government of the territory in which they reside. In other words, a half century of ~Palestinians~ is more than enough.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at February 8, 2004 8:37 PMThey'll be targets for the Palestinian frustration with the fence.
Posted by: jd watson at February 8, 2004 8:46 PMI assume that the settlers will be no more than 20 yards behind the last IDF vehicle leaving town screaming wait for me. The whole issue has always been a fake.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at February 9, 2004 5:17 PM