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Gush Katif towns to be renamed after terrorists

Encouraged by Disengagement, Hamas Predicts Israel's End

Palestinian Authority (PA) officials have already indicated the Jewish communities evacuated by Israel will be renamed, explaining they cannot permit the names that were used by the occupation to remain. Officials confirm reports that it is likely that some of the areas will be named after PA heroes, including Yasser Arafat and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas founder assassinated in a surgical strike by Israel.

strange bedfellows

Palestinian Interior Minister Nasser Yousef (R) and Lieutenant-General William Ward, the U.S. security envoy to the Middle East (L) attend Palestinian police graduation ceremony in the West Bank city of Jericho on August 25, 2005.... al Reuters

Boker tov?

Haaretz:

After a stormy week of disengagement, Israel and the U.S. appear to see eye to eye on the next stage. Israel has proven its determination in carrying out the pullout from Gaza, and now the Palestinians must implement the required reforms. The message was clearly spelled out in telephone calls from Washington to Ramallah in the past days.

U.S. State Department:

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch said Wednesday that it is critical that the Palestinian Authority disarm Hamas and other terrorist organizations in order to take advantage of the opportunity for progress toward peace presented by the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. "In the road map, there is a requirement to take steps toward the dismantlement of the terror organizations. Hamas is for us a terror organization. I would expect that the PA would do those things. We have made those requirements clear to them," Welch said. "Security is the beginning, the middle and the end, and security cannot be had either for the people in those areas or for those who live around them if there is a variety of armed organizations that are allowed to operate."

DEBKA

- Palestinian terror organizations poised for imminent large-scale attacks on Israeli troops and West Bankers

- A Palestinian slashed an Israeli soldier at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron Friday. He is in serious condition. The assailant was caught.

- Al-Qaeda-Palestinian has claimed the knifing attack in which Shmuel Mett, a 21-year old British citizen, died in the Old City of Jerusalem Wednesday night. Three other yeshiva students were stabbed by the same assailant.

Ultra-orthodox Jews carry the body of Shmuel Matt, 21, the British Jewish seminary student who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in the Old City.... (AFP)

- At an urgent weekend consultation, US, British, Egyptian, Jordanian and Israeli intelligence and counter-terror officials concluded that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s terror teams now pose an imminent threat to Israel. The Katyusha rocket which landed harmlessly near Israel’s Eilat airport across from Jordanian Aqaba on Friday, Aug 19, was not a stray from the volley aimed at the two US naval vessels docked in the Jordanian Red Sea port. It was Zarqawi’s first direct attack against Israel and it was aimed at its southernmost airport. The fact that the rocket missed its target was neither here nor there according to their common assessment.

Associated Press photo caption:

A sudden spike in Israeli-Palestinian violence threatened a period of calm that has surrounded Israel's pullout from Gaza and part of the West Bank as well as a six-month truce, leading to calls for restraint from the United States.

Arab terrorists didn't do anything, you see, there was a "spike in violence," rather like a spike in the temperature. And that "period of calm" and the "six-month truce"? They have existed only in AP photo captions.

Problem is, that's all the general public reads -if anything- about Israel.

And suddenly

I'm back, but not the same. Moving is transformative... and exhausting.

Just wanted to say g'night. More tomorrow:)

The main story is rough; the ending, sweet

This is Shlomo Wollins reporting live from Neve Dekalim, Gush Katif, on Aug. 15, 05:08 Israel Time What my eyes have seen tonite cannot be described....a scene of near-meltdown, near-riot, and the beginning of a civil conflict between thousands of youth and thousands of soldiers (ages 18-21, in most cases). I am in the process of decoding/uploading an 11-minute video of these events which should be posted within 8 hours from now. Tonite, after the end of the Tisha B'Av mourning fast, a very popular singing star (Aaron Raizel) performed a concert in central square. Word spread that at midnite, there would be a major protest/road blockage right outside front entrance gates to Neve Dekalim. I arrived and madness had already begun. A mass of about 500-700 youths had blocked the only route through Gush Katif and where not allowing any army vehicles to go through. The situation became heated when the youths found hundreds of glossy, aerial photos of Neve Dekalim to be used for evacuation. We began to put white glue (non-transparent) on the windshield of this large army Jeep which the crowd had stopped, and stickering the aerial photos to the windshield (thereby preventing the ability to drive away). While violence is not the intention here, rather the destruction of army equipment to be used for community destructions, it is a certainty that these confrontations will turn violent when the soldiers are coming for community deporation/destruction. Subsequently, there were near fistfights between one of the soldiers who got out of the car and certain very agitated protestors. I was standing about 2 feet away the whole time, and was leaning against the jeep itself to participate in the blockage. I still have white glue on my hands and nose as signs of the beginning of large-scale and serious civil disobedience. As you will see in the exclusive IR.Video in several hours, the majority of the aerial photos were then burned in a bonfire next to road. After the crowd left the road and went inside the gate, all sat down for speaches by rabbis & community leaders begging for calm. But, without suggesting an alternative plan, inevitably the youth will decide to go out on their own. Suddenly, there were loud argument and near-physical confrontation between passionate Jews arguing how we should stop the "disengagement". All problems were avoided (with me stepping in the middle of 2 or 3 heated arguments and pleading for calm, and then we began to sing songs of Jewish unity and danced in a circle with everyone applauding when two people hugged in middle of circle (to "make up" for previous and heated arguments). Like everything in Jewish history, the main story is rough but the ending is sweet. Let's hope that pattern is enacted in Gush Katif with regard to "disengagement".

SIGN PETITION TO GEORGE BUSH: AGAINST DISENGAGEMENT

Shabbat Shalom

photo copyright Billie Hull 2005

Boulder/Denver MONDAY

CANDLELIGHT PRAYER GATHERING/Rally

SUPPORT JEWISH GAZA (GUSH KATIF), ISRAEL

On the date PLANNED for EXPULSION of JEWS

MONDAY AUGUST 15, 2005

8 P.M.

COLORADO STATE CAPITOL, WEST STEPS

14th and Broadway, Downtown Denver

for further information, write to DenverDent@juno.com

Hamastan, cont'd

DEBKA-Net-Weekly Exclusive:
Hamas, now refusing to disarm after Israel’s pullout, outnumbers Palestinian security forces three to one in Gaza

Hamas leaders step up their challenge to Israel and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’ effort to assert control over Gaza after Israel’s withdrawal next week. Friday, Aug. 12, the head of Hamas’ Qassam Brigades, Ahmed al-Ghandour, declared they would keep their guns to continue the fight against the Jewish state.

Meanwhile, President Bush was interviewed at his ranch in Crawford, on Israel's Channel One yesterday:

JERUSALEM, Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush says a planned pullout of Jewish settlers from occupied Gaza "will be good for Israel".

"I believe the decision that Prime Minister Sharon has made and is going to follow through on will be good for Israel ... First of all the previous system wasn't working. There was an intifada (Palestinian uprising), there was death, there was killing. And if you notice, there's been a calm in attacks ... And I can understand why people think this decision is one that will create a vacuum into which terrorism will flow ... I happen to disagree. I think this will create an opportunity for democracy to emerge and democracies are peaceful ... I think in the long run two states living side by side in peace is the ultimate solution for Israel's security ... In the meantime we've got to work, you know, to dismantle terrorist organisations, and that's precisely what the road map calls for."

Glimmer of hope?

"Let my people stay"

TAKE HEART:

300,000 Rallied in Tel Aviv yesterday
against the disengagement

Photo Essay by David Wilder at Eretz.org

Reuters says "thousands of rightist Israelis ... rallied in Tel Aviv," but I may forgive them their bad math, because B"H they did take this stunning photograph:

And what's on the front page at Haaretz?

- Security forces: Zero tolerance for Gaza infiltrators
- Kfar Darom still has plenty of life
- Soldier gets eight years for killing UK activist
- 42,000 troops deployed in six 'rings' to carry out pulloutNo rally.

Also see more photos from Wednesday rally in Jerusalem,
via Isralert.

P.S., Gaza Watch

Charles at LGF has started a photoblog called Gaza Watch. If anyone has photos to send .... he gets something like 85,000 hits a day. The expulsion needs to be "in the face" of the world.

Also, I've never asked for money here at Boker tov, Boulder! but if you're able, I'd appreciate your sending what you can to help Shlomo Wollins of IsraelReporter to continue to get word out - after the army takes down the cellular grid and service in Gush Katif.

If you can donate, please write to shlomo@israelreporter.com, tell him what you can give, and he'll tell you how to do it.

Thanks, and Good Shabbos!

Please don't forget to light Shabbos candles. If you've never done it, tomorrow evening would be a great time to start.

"Everything has its limits, even darkness. As the Zohar says, 'When the world was made a limit was set on how long it will function in confusion.'" --from the wisdom of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

See Chabad.org for candlelighting times and procedures.

Shalom, Lehitraot

I never know when some well-intentioned person is going to crate my computer and make it disappear; I dare not so much as take a shower for fear of it. Meanwhile, I can only deal with what's on the top of my full plate: a death, a new life and a rapidly approaching move (of gargantuan proportion over great distance).

If -actually, when- someone connives to disconnect me from the innernut, my faithful readers would do well to take note of the following blogospheric locations:

Rick Richman of Jewish Current Issues is documenting How Far We Have Fallen in the United States;

Shlomo Wollins of IsraelReporter is covering the Fall of Israel (Gd forbid) into the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists;

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs is covering the Fall of western civilization to Islamic barbarity; and

Rabbi Lazer Brody at Lazer Beams is keeping our spirits from Falling.

You will be in good hands with these four gentlemen - all of whom are of the highest intention and integrity. Chazak to them all, and Shalom, Lehitraot to all the readers and friends of BtB.

B'sorot tovot ~ may we hear only good news,
Yael