The bill to repeal the Disengagement Act of 2005, which decreed the expulsion of close to 10,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria was passed by the Knesset in a preliminary reading on Wednesday by a majority of 62 to 36.
The fascistic law was enacted following Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s decision on what he termed euphemistically the “disengagement plan.” The terms “uprooting” and “exiling” of thousands of Jews seemed too real at the time.
The fascistic law stated that the Gaza Coast Regional Council would be abolished and the settlers in the Gaza Strip and the evacuated settlements in northern Samaria would be evicted but would receive financial compensation calculated according to the property they would lose, the size of their families, and the number of years they had lived in their settlement, including compensation for mental anguish, help in rehabilitating, and compensation for the cost of moving to settlers who evacuate their own home by the set date (the day following the 9th of Av – same as the expulsions from Jerusalem and Spain).
Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, MK Yuli Edelstein, said: “While we are dealing with important things, an even more important process is taking place right under our noses. The Palestinians, with the encouragement and support of the European Union, are biting into Area C and setting facts on the ground. Once they manage to establish such a fact – it becomes very difficult to change it. See what has been happening for years with Khan Al Ahmar. The solution is to settle in Judea and Samaria. We need to go back and lead the construction in all the regions of the homeland and provide the infrastructure for the residents who set with their bodies and in their homes the borders of the State of Israel.”
An aside: Edelstein was singled out by the left as one of four “weak link” Likud members to be manipulated against their own party and its chairman, Benjamin Netanyahu. So, now it’s settled: the feisty prisoner of Zion Edelstein is not for sale.
Minister of the Negev, Galilee, and National Resilience, Issac Wasserlauf (Otzma Yehudit) recalled on Wednesday: “I was 13 at the time of the disengagement, but the memories are burned into my brain. I’m not just talking about uprooting unique, flourishing settlements of salt-of-the-earth families, I’m not talking about the physical, emotional, economic, and national damage that we still bear today. I’m talking about the persecution, about institutions that resolved to intentionally harm the opponents of the plan. The same persecution that was turned rapaciously against the demonstrators, about the police’s use of violence against them with clubs and horses without any distinction. Children aged 14-15 were put in detention cells. Hundreds were brutally arrested, hundreds of indictments were filed, and it was evident that both the security apparatus and the police, both the judiciary and the media, were united in harming the settlement enterprise – no matter the cost.
“I also remember the deportation of the Jews of Amona. The vigorous beatings suffered by innocent boys who had just come to protest. My sister, who had never been arrested before, and had never had a criminal record, was also arrested. She told me at the time that she was standing there on the side, terrified, and then a policeman came and hit her with a baton and then arrested her. The images repeat and ebb from time to time. The bleeding heads, the broken bones, and the horses galloping into the crowd.
“Amid these images, amid this madness, a generation grew up that looked and saw, a generation that promised itself that its children would never again see a Jew beating a Jew, and never again see a Jew expelling a Jew. The photos from Gush Katif, North Samaria, and Amona remain, with some of us harboring painful memories, and with some of us bearing the scars of body and soul.”
