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A
Warning from Israel
What
May Come After the Evacuation of Jewish Settlers from the Gaza
Strip
By
URI DAVIS, ILAN PAPPE, and TAMAR YARON
We
feel that it is urgent and necessary to raise the alarm regarding
what may come during and after evacuation of Jewish settlers from
the Gaza Strip occupied by Israel in 1967, in the event that the
evacuation is implemented.
We held back on getting this
statement published and circulated, seeking additional feedback
from our peers. The publication in Ha'aretz (22 June 2005) quoting
statements by General (Reserves) Eival Giladi, the head of the
Coordination and Strategy team of the Prime Minister's Office,
motivated us not to delay publication and circulation any further.
Confirming our worst fears, General (Res.) Eival Giladi went on
record in print and on television to the effect that "Israel
will act in a very resolute manner in order to prevent terror
attacks and [militant] fire while the disengagement is being
implemented" and that "If pinpoint response proves
insufficient, we may have to use weaponry that causes major
collateral damage, including helicopters and planes, with mounting
danger to surrounding people."
We believe that one primary,
unstated motive for the determination of the government of the
State of Israel to get the Jewish settlers of the Qatif (Katif)
settlement block out of the Gaza Strip may be to keep them out of
harm's way when the Israeli government and military possibly
trigger an intensified mass attack on the approximately one and a
half million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, of whom about half
are 1948 Palestine refugees.
The scenario could be similar to
what has already happened in the past - a tactic that Ariel Sharon
has used many times in his military career - i.e., utilizing
provocation in order to launch massive attacks.
Following this pattern, we
believe that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Defence Minister
Shaul Mofaz are considering to utilize provocation for vicious
attacks in the near future on the approximately one and a half
million Palestinian inhabitants of the Gaza Strip: a possible
combination of intensified state terror and mass killing. The
Israeli army is not likely to risk the kind of casualties to its
soldiers that would be involved in employing ground troops on a
large scale in the Gaza Strip. With General Dan Halutz as Chief of
Staff they don't need to. It was General Dan Halutz, in his
capacity as Commander of the Israeli Air Force, who authorized the
bombing of a civilian Gaza City quarter with a bomb weighing one
ton, and then went on record as saying that he sleeps well and
that the only thing he feels when dropping a bomb is a slight bump
of the aircraft.
The initiators of this alarm
have been active for many decades in the defence of human rights
inside the State of Israel and beyond. We do not have the academic
evidence to support our feeling, but given past behavior,
ideological leanings and current media spin initiated by the
Israeli government and military, we believe that the designs of
the State of Israel are clear, and we submit that our educated
intuition with matters pertaining to the defence of human rights
has been more often correct than otherwise.
We urge all those who share the
concern above to add their names to ours and urgently give this
alarm as wide a circulation as possible.
Circulating and publishing this
text may constitute a significant factor in deterring the Israeli
government, thus protecting the Palestinian population in the Gaza
Strip from this very possible catastrophe and contributing to
prevent yet more war crimes from occurring.
Please sign, circulate, and
publish this alarm without delay!
Please send notification of your
signature to Tamar Yaron tiyaron@hazorea.org.il
WE WOULD ALSO APPRECIATE
RECEIVING NOTIFICATION IF THE ALARM WAS PUBLISHED IN ANY MEDIA
AND/OR IF IT WAS SENT TO A GROUP DISTRIBUTION LIST.
Uri Davis, Sakhnin, uridavis@actcom.co.il
, Ilan Pappe, Tiv'on, pappe@poli.haifa.ac.il,
and Tamar Yaron, Kibbutz Hazorea, tiyaron@hazorea.org.il
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