Israelis Rally for Gaza Withdrawal

Waving balloons and banners and humming along to old antiwar anthems, tens of thousands of Israelis turned out Saturday for one of the biggest peace demonstrations since the beginning of the 43-month conflict with the Palestinians.

The mass march, on the heels of Israel’s worst week of combat deaths in the Gaza Strip, was aimed at signaling wide public support for a withdrawal from the seaside territory -- and counterbalancing a rebuff of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza pullout plan two weeks ago by his conservative Likud Party.

Police sources estimated that more than 120,000 people attended the rally at a square in Tel Aviv named for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Organizers put the number at double that and said they hoped the size and enthusiasm of the crowd signaled a resurgence of the Israeli left, which has lain dormant for much of the conflict.

Demonstrators of all ages poured in from across the country, hoisting toddlers on their shoulders, pushing wheelchairs and strollers, sporting dreadlocks and graying ponytails. The marchers waited patiently to make their way through security checks at police barricades.

“We have to say goodbye to Gaza,” Labor Party leader Shimon Peres told the crowd, to cheers. “This is not a demonstration of the left -- it’s a demonstration of the majority.”

Polls have suggested that nearly three-quarters of Israelis want to relinquish the Jewish settlements in Gaza, where 7,500 Israelis live among more than 1.2 million Palestinians. But the resounding defeat from his own party in the recent referendum has forced Sharon to spend time regrouping. He insists he will push ahead with the plan’s main points.

Although something of a carnival atmosphere prevailed for most of the evening, the rally opened on a solemn note, with a moment of silence for the 13 Israeli soldiers who have died in Gaza since Tuesday.

The deaths were particularly wrenching for Israelis because 11 of the slain soldiers were riding in armored personnel carriers that were blown to pieces, scattering body parts and making it extremely difficult to secure enough remains to hold funerals.

Many demonstrators said the week’s surge in violence spurred them into action. “The atmosphere changed -- we just woke up,” said Yael Lotan, 47, who has a son serving in the army.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell met with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Korei in Jordan in the highest-level encounter between the Palestinian leader and a U.S. official.

After a 40-minute meeting at the airport in Amman, the capital, Powell said the Palestinians “want to seize the opportunity” presented by Sharon’s withdrawal initiative, although “they want to know more about it, of course.”

“They want to see if there are any restrictions on the proposal that would not be to their advantage,” Powell told reporters. “And frankly, we have to see what the proposal is.” He noted that Sharon was reworking the plan after the Likud rejection.

Korei said the talk was “very, very constructive” and that Palestinian officials still hold out hope for a Palestinian state by 2005, as envisioned by the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the road map.

Palestinians were angered last month when President Bush, receiving Sharon at the White House, endorsed the prime minister’s Gaza initiative, which also calls for Israel to retain large settlements in the West Bank and appears to rule out the return of large numbers of Palestinians to ancestral homes inside Israel.

The meeting appeared to be an effort to reassure the Palestinians of U.S. intentions to serve as a fair mediator. Notably, Powell refrained from the usual U.S. criticism of the Palestinians for failing to bring violent militant groups under control.

For Palestinians, Saturday marked a bitter occasion: the 56th anniversary of the founding of Israel, a date they commemorate as the nakba, or catastrophe.

Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, in a speech delivered at his battered West Bank headquarters and broadcast on Palestinian television, called on his compatriots to “terrorize your enemy.” Arafat associates swiftly sought to explain the reference as a traditional Koranic verse that did not necessarily constitute a call to arms.

Nearly a week of violence in Gaza trailed off Saturday as Israeli troops pulled out of a volatile strip of territory abutting the Egyptian frontier near the town of Rafah. Palestinians said the Israelis had demolished dozens of homes, leaving hundreds of people homeless. They termed the aftermath a humanitarian disaster.

Israel has said it will step up the destruction of buildings close to the military patrol road that runs along the border, to deprive Palestinian gunmen of cover. Seven of the 13 Israeli soldiers killed since Tuesday died along the “Philadelphi” route.

Several Palestinians were reported injured in a pair of Israeli missile strikes early Sunday in Gaza City that the Israeli army described as targeting structures that “serve as focal points for terrorist activity.” Palestinians said missiles slammed into the offices of a newspaper associated with Hamas and a branch office of Arafat’s Fatah movement.

Israel made unsuccessful attempts with missile strikes early Saturday to assassinate the two leaders in Gaza of Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian group that claimed responsibility for the week’s deadliest attacks on troops.

Israeli missile strikes have already killed most of the top leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad’s sometime ally and sometime rival.

Times staff writer Paul Richter in Suweimeh, Jordan, contributed to this report.