Lawmakers Begin Heated Pre-Vote Debate on Gaza

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon inaugurated a stormy parliamentary debate Monday over his plan to pull Jewish settlers and Israeli soldiers out of the Gaza Strip, telling lawmakers that relinquishing the war-seized territory would leave Israel stronger and more secure.

The Israeli leader is expected to prevail when the Knesset votes this evening on his initiative, but only because the left-leaning Labor Party is lending him its support. Nearly half of the lawmakers from Sharon’s own conservative Likud Party are expected either to vote against the measure or abstain.

The prime minister was interrupted more than a dozen times by hecklers during his appeal to uproot the Gaza settlements that he was instrumental in creating decades ago, after Israel captured the seaside territory from Egypt in the 1967 Middle East War.

“This is a fateful time for Israel,” said the 76-year-old leader. “In all my life as a soldier and commander, as a politician and lawmaker, as a minister and prime minister, I haven’t known a decision as difficult as this one.”

In the months since the withdrawal initiative was unveiled, settlers and their supporters have reviled Sharon as a traitor, using increasingly harsh language and ever more thinly veiled threats. In his speech, however, he stuck with what has been a consistent strategy of offering the settlers warm sympathy rather than responding in kind.

“I know what this decision means to thousands of Jews who have lived for many years in Gaza, who built homes and planted trees and flowers, who had sons and daughters who never knew another home,” Sharon said. “I sent them there. I was a partner to this enterprise.... I am well aware of their pain, their anger and their despair.”

“Then why are you doing this?” shouted lawmaker Effi Eitam of the pro-settler National Religious Party, who was eventually ejected from the chamber after failing to heed calls to order by the parliament speaker, Reuven Rivlin.

Ignoring the interruption, Sharon went on: “I am convinced deep in my heart that this [withdrawal] will strengthen Israel, will strengthen its hold on territory that is vital to our very existence.”

The debate was expected to consume two full days before the vote. All 120 lawmakers have the right to speak on the initiative, and it appeared that most would claim their allotted five minutes on the Knesset floor.

Security surrounding the proceedings was extraordinarily tight. Dogs trained to detect explosives repeatedly swept the chamber before the session convened, and armed police were stationed on every street corner for blocks surrounding the parliament building.

In Gaza, the confrontation between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters has grown more intense as the prospect of a pullout becomes more tangible. Israel does not want to be seen as retreating under fire, while militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad want to be able to claim they drove the Israeli forces out.

The death toll in the latest clash, which broke out Sunday night in and near the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, had climbed to at least 16 by late Monday. Israeli troops, tanks and aircraft moved in for what the army called a series of strikes against Palestinian attackers who have been firing mortar rounds at Jewish settlements in Gaza.

Both sides agreed that most of the slain Palestinians were combatants. However, several civilians, including an 11-year-old boy, were also among those killed, Palestinians said. Hospital officials also said many children were among the more than 70 injured.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Korei denounced the military action as “barbaric and criminal.”

Other senior Palestinian officials professed studied indifference to the outcome of the Knesset vote.

“This does not concern us,” said Nabil abu Rudaineh, an aide to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. “Any meaningful withdrawal must mean an end to Israeli aggression, and a withdrawal from the West Bank as well.”

In his Knesset speech, Sharon blamed the current Palestinian uprising on Arafat.

But, perhaps mindful that the address was being carried live by the Arabic-language satellite channel Al Jazeera, the prime minister took advantage of a rare opportunity to speak directly to Israel’s Arab neighbors.

“In this long war between peoples, many civilians were killed, many innocent people, and tears were met with tears,” he said. “I want you to know that we never wished to build our life in this homeland on your destruction. We feel pain for the innocent victims among you.”

As is his custom, Sharon invoked his own battlefield history -- this time with unaccustomed elegiac overtones.

“I fought in all this country’s wars, and I learned with my own flesh the lesson that without force, we could not have survived in this region, which has no pity for the weak,” he said. “I also learned that it isn’t the sword alone that will decide this bitter dispute over this land.”