Thousands of Israelis Urge Gaza Pullout

[JohnLocke]

Thousands of Israelis Urge Gaza Pullout
By Glenn Frankel -- Washington Post
Sunday, May 16, 2004
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TEL AVIV -- Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered here Saturday night to press for Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in the first major public demonstration by the country's peace camp in two years.
While many of those in the crowd have been bitter opponents of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, they came out to express their support for his proposal to pull troops and Jewish settlers out of Gaza and to protest the rejection of the plan by Sharon's Likud Party.
(...)
The Israeli peace movement has been fractured and demoralized in recent years as a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings of passenger buses, cafes and other civilian targets in Israel have caused deep public revulsion and built support for Sharon's hard-edged security stance. But the recent rejection of the withdrawal scheme in a referendum of Likud members, followed by fierce violence this week --including the public display of a severed head and other body parts of dead soldiers by Palestinian fighters -- inspired activists to return to the streets to try to rally the majority that, according to a series of opinion polls, favors the plan.
The rally brought together longtime activists from Peace Now, the main antiwar citizens' group, along with former prime minister Shimon Peres, leader of the once-dominant Labor Party, trade unionists and other activists who have not shared a platform in almost a decade. They gathered in Rabin Square, named after Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister assassinated in 1995 who, along with Peres, championed the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians that have been buried by nearly four years of warfare.
"To leave Gaza, we need the majority to stop its silence," Ami Ayalon, former head of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, told the crowd. "It needs to say, or even scream, what it thinks."
(...)
The crowd was an eclectic mix of young and old, some with small children. "I know I have to work hard now so that my son won't have to go to Gaza when he grows up," said Sharon Amit, 35, a worker at the state-run Voice of Israel radio service, who pushed her 3-year-old son, Rotem, through the crowd in a stroller. She said the events of last week had compelled her to attend the rally. "The feeling is heavy this week," she said. "It caused people to think again, to become more involved."
(...)
"We feel we're being held hostage by a small minority," Golan said.
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Read the rest here.

[JohnLocke]

1. Keep it up, folks!

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[Darranar]

3. Our "fair and balanced" media...

calls 150,000 "thousands"?

[Violet_Crumble]

4. Yeah, I noticed that...

n/t

[Lithos]

5. Locking

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