What Are We Doing? Part V

Morag

Kerem Atzmona resists evacuation

It took border policemen an hour and a half to remove all 16 Kerem Atzmona families from their homes on Wednesday afternoon, leaving some 200 infiltrators in the area yet to be evacuated.

Border policemen went door to door in the south Gaza settlement, in many cases dragging women and children out of their homes. The sobs of the evacuees could be heard above the scuffling of the border policemen.

In many cases, residents locked themselves indoors and policemen were forced to break them down. One woman became hysterical when a soldier picked up her two-year-old son, screaming "you betrayed me! Don't you dare touch my son!"

In the doorway to one of the homes sat two small children, aged five and seven, with their hands up in the air, crying and begging the border policemen not to enter their home.

Border policemen said that of the several communities they'd been at today, Kerem Atzmona was proving to be the most resistant and emotional.

A number of border policemen broke down in tears and had to request a respite from the action.

Catch me if you can :) Neve Dekalim

Neve Dekalim

In Neveh Dekalim, the largest settlement in Gush Katif, some 300 families and 3,000 infiltrators were waiting for the evacuating forces in the synagogue Wednesday.
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As of Wednesday at noon, 300 of 520 families remained in the settlement.

Evacuating forces were going into houses. Each squad carried maps of the internal layout of the houses they are entering, including information about the residents of each house.

After each neighborhood was cleared, police were blocking them off by standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a blockade. Activists were sitting in a circle in the middle of the settlement, singing prayers and engaging soldiers in conversation. Police were occasionally grabbing them one by one, putting them on a bus, and taking them out of the settlement.

Most residents were leaving quietly. In very few cases, people had to be forced on to the bus.