Israelis ‘Ache’ at Scenes of Gaza Settlers Being Forcibly Removed

In the air-conditioned bustle of an upscale Israeli shopping mall, an hour’s drive but a world away from the heat and dust of the Gaza Strip, passersby paused Wednesday, transfixed by scenes on a big-screen TV in the window of an electronics store.

Here were weeping Jewish settlers, a distraught-looking soldier wiping spittle from his face after an encounter with a teenage protester, an old, tottering rabbi kissing a Torah scroll, a toddler unattended in his stroller in the scorching sun.

“I can’t look at this,” one man said, shaking his head. Then he looked some more.

Israelis from all walks of life found themselves swept by powerful and contradictory emotions as they watched the emptying of Jewish settlements in Gaza -- a national drama, but one enacted on the intimate scale of all Israeli public events.

Although Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to relinquish Gaza has the support of a majority of Israelis, few were unmoved by the spectacle of settlers being removed from their homes.

That was true even for those with the most wrenching of personal reasons for opposing settlements in Gaza.

“I ache for them, but nothing can be done,” said Shlomo Vishinsky, a prominent stage actor whose son, a soldier, was killed in Gaza last year.

“Only a year and a half ago my son was guarding them,” Vishinsky said. “To me, it’s not the land there that was sacred. My son was sacred.”

Loved ones of soldiers, a large proportion of the population in a country with compulsory military service, were particularly distressed by scenes of troops facing a hail of insults.

“My son is there -- I haven’t slept for nights,” said Sarit Mizrachi, a Tel Aviv mother whose youngest child was sleeping in a carriage. “I asked my husband to go to synagogue today to pray hard for all of us, for the Israeli people, that we get through this in peace, and quickly.”

In their months-long campaign to prevent the withdrawal, some people employed extreme tactics, such as using symbols evoking the Holocaust and planting dummy bombs. Many Israelis became alienated, but that didn’t keep these same people from feeling a stab of sympathy on Wednesday.

“I say to myself, ‘Oh, poor them,’ and then it irritates me so much, because a minute ago I hated them for comparing their evacuation to the Holocaust,” said Liron Elron, a 17-year-old.

Even Israelis whose secular lifestyle is at odds with the mainly devout holdout settlers showed understanding.

“They’re in pain, and it must be understood that people in pain may sometimes act stupidly,” Shmulik Dagan, a lawyer on his lunch hour, said.

But he, like many, was dismayed and repelled by the sight of small children caught up in the evacuation. “Why do little kids have to see this?” he said.

Though opponents of the pullout were a minority, they were a highly vocal one.

The rifts were on clear display. Across Israel, opponents and supporters of the withdrawal signaled their views by flying ribbons from their car antennas: orange against the pullout, blue in favor. Then people started tying them inside, to the mirror, because they didn’t want their antennas snapped off by someone who disagreed.

When it became clear the pullout could not be blocked by even the most vociferous protests, opponents were left feeling crushed and embittered.

“I walked around crying last night,” said Effi Eitam, a lawmaker and Gaza resident who left Sharon’s Cabinet over the pullout issue. “How did we come to this? I cried for everyone.”

By the time the pullout came to pass, many Israelis simply had had enough of the quarreling over Gaza. The mass-circulation newspaper Maariv featured a giant front-page photo of troops marching on the settlements, with the headline “We’ll Get Through This Together.” Although strife was the order of the day Wednesday in the Gaza settlements, many Israeli commentators sought to sound themes of reconciliation.

“Today, we are telling the story of tomorrow,” Ami Ayalon, a former head of the domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, and an architect of an influential peace initiative, told Israel’s Channel One. “What happens now will determine the ability of all of us to continue together.”

*

Special correspondent Tami Zer in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.