Word: gaza
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Deep in the heart of the Gaza Strip, the Hilburgs are pretending to have a normal day. Life in the Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif is out of the ordinary at the best of times, but this is the worst of times. Yet Bryna, 55, defiantly acts as if nothing has changed, washing the dishes, tidying the living room, settling down to write end-of-year reports on her speech-therapy students. Out in their nearby hothouses, her husband Sammy, 56, is resolutely prepping the sandy soil for the next vegetable crop. But their bleak eyes, full of anger...
Beginning this week, their hamlet of Netzer Hazani and the other 20 Jewish settlements that occupy more than one-third of the Gaza Strip will be ghost towns, the Hilburg home of 26 years reduced to rubble, the very purpose of their lives stripped away. Under the controversial policy Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls disengagement, some 8,700 Israeli residents in Gaza and another 674 in the West Bank must leave their homes or face removal by force. The plan has the support of the international community, including the Bush Administration, which sees the withdrawal as a small but vital...
...When we reach the first of the caravillas at the northern corner of the Gaza Strip, we hover above a nearby battalion of tanks, parked in neat rows. Their presence reflects Israeli fears that Palestinian militants will try to attack the settlements during the relative chaos of the withdrawal. If that happens, these tanks will roll in to keep Palestinian gunmen occupied until the withdrawal is complete. Only one dune separates the field of tanks from the fence and the village of Beit Hanoun. It might not take much - a few homemade Qassam rockets - to set the tanks rolling...
...flight turns along the north of the Gaza Strip toward the sea leaving behind the withdrawal itself and focusing on Israel's fears for the future. Hard on the border fence is Netiv ha-Asara, a small farming community. Last month, a Qassam rocket dropped onto the leafy dune-top village and killed an Israeli woman. When Israel pulls out of Gaza, Netiv ha-Asara could become an even easier target for the rockets, a new frontline...
...Four miles north along the coastal dunes, the twin smokestacks of the Ashkelon power plant blink their red warning lights. These, too, are within easy range of the rockets of Hamas once Israel takes its troops out of northern Gaza, as are the massive circular fuel tanks around its perimeter, and Israeli officials fear a strike against the plant could cripple Israel's electricity grid. It abuts the city of Ashkelon, which has grown to a mpopulation of 120,000 as new immigrants from Russia flooded into its bright white apartment blocks during the last decade. "That," says Miri Eisen...