More violence in Gaza stirs pullout debate

By Tamer Ziara
The Associated Press

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most e-mailed articles

The escalating violence triggered debate in Israel over its presence in Gaza. While some called for a pullout, others recommended tougher military measures.

Eleven Israeli soldiers were killed in roadside ambushes in Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday, the army's most significant setback in more than three years of fighting. Twenty-seven Palestinians have been killed since Tuesday and at least 235 Palestinians have been wounded.

Yesterday's flashpoint was the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza, on the border with Egypt. A day earlier, Palestinians fired a homemade rocket from Rafah at an armored personnel carrier transporting a ton of explosives, and the blast killed five soldiers inside, scattering their remains over a wide area.

Israeli helicopters hovered above Rafah yesterday, as hundreds of soldiers with surgical gloves, assault rifles slung over their shoulders, crawled in the sand and put body parts into plastic bags.

The helicopters fired at least five missiles into Rafah. One missile killed seven people, and another several hours later killed four others, including two 15-year-old boys, hospital workers said. In a separate incident in Rafah, a 19-year-old man was killed by Israeli gunfire.

The army said it fired missiles at gunmen, and residents said at least five of the dead were militants.

The deaths of 11 young soldiers energized the campaign in favor of a Gaza pullback, much as pressure from bereaved parents played a pivotal role in Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. Sharon's recent version of the plan was scuttled by opponents of the pullout in his own Likud party.

One of the most powerful voices yesterday was that of Shlomo Vishinsky, 60, a stage actor whose 20-year-old son, Lior, was among the five soldiers killed Wednesday in southern Gaza.

"My son was a patsy for the Likud," Vishinsky said, adding that he would have the funeral cortege assemble at Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv in a show of outrage.

No date for the funeral was set because the remains have not been recovered. Yet Moshe Kanan, whose son was killed in Gaza fighting last year, vigorously opposed a pullout, saying it would reward Palestinian militants and encourage further attacks against Israel.
 
Directing his words to Vishinsky, Kanan said: "I want to tell him that his son is not a patsy. His son is a hero; his son is holy."

Sharon announced earlier this year that he planned to evacuate soldiers and 7,500 settlers from the coastal strip — a sharp turnaround for the erstwhile patron of settlement expansion.

The pullback was to be part of Sharon's plan of "unilateral disengagement" from the Palestinians, to reduce friction and draw a border in the West Bank.

A majority of Israelis favor a pullback. After the Likud referendum, many complained that a hardline minority was imposing its will. Only about half the Likud's 193,000 participated in the vote, meaning the decision was made by 2 percent of Israel's population.