Pullout painful for all Israelis

Fri, Aug. 12, 2005

Pullout painful for all Israelis

by Uri Dromi

JERUSALEM -- Next Monday, early in the morning, Israeli police and army officers will knock on doors of Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip. They will be polite and considerate, but their message will nevertheless be firm: ''Sorry, folks. Time to pack and leave.'' They will give the settlers 48 hours to pack, and on Wednesday morning will come back to help the settlers move, or -- if the settlers resist -- to evacuate them by force.

These are not happy days for Israelis. Even people like me, who for long believed we shouldn't have settled in Gaza in the first place, are not jubilant now. True, it seems that, ultimately, reason has prevailed, and, thank God, Israel is pulling its 7,500 citizens out of the midst of more than one million Palestinians. Yet, when the moment comes and these people have to leave their homes, it's difficult for us all.

First, there is the personal plight of the people to be evacuated. Some of them have lived there for many years, raised children and grandchildren there, and buried their loved ones -- some of whom were killed by Palestinians in vicious terror attacks. They leave behind blossoming fields and hot-houses. And remember that they went there with the blessing of all governments, from both left and right. Now they are suddenly told, ''Oops, you're not needed here any more. As a matter of fact, you've become a burden. Out.'' If I were a settler in Gaza these days, I would be very bitter.

Not that these people are thrown from their homes into the street. The government has gone out of its way to arrange alternative housing for them in Israel proper, and to smooth their moving with nice compensation packages. Still, this is painful, especially for the people who have settled there out of idealistic motives, those who have perceived themselves to be the new Zionist pioneers. These people are now being told by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the majority of Israelis, who support the move, that all their efforts were futile, that it was a mistake to settle in the Gaza Strip. That some of us knew it long ago, and wrote countless newspaper articles against it, is beside the point. Now is not the time for ``I told you so.''

On the other hand, the momentous event of next week is not only about evacuating people from their homes. It is about the ability of a duly elected government to carry out its decisions. It is true that Sharon was once the biggest supporter of settling in Gaza. However, once he became prime minister, he obviously gained a different perspective. He realized that keeping those few settlers in Gaza was detrimental to Israel's interests and decided, in the wake of the ancient Romans, ''to shorten the lines and sharpen the spears.'' Israelis who oppose it have the legitimate right to protest against this decision, and indeed, hundreds of thousands of people rallied this week in Tel Aviv to do exactly that. This is democracy at its best. However, if next week the settlers and their supporters try by force to disrupt the evacuation, then they will challenge the basic tenet of the Israeli democracy. If they succeed, and the government is proven powerless, then this will be the end of the Israeli democracy.

On Monday morning, then, when the army and police officers knock on the settlers' door, I will have mixed feelings. In my mind I know that this is the right thing to do. Yet, in my heart, I will be on both sides of the door.

Uri Dromi is the director of international outreach at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem.