Gaza Evacuation Set For 9 Av 2005 As Settlers Prepare For Showdown
Posted 6/16/2004
By Matthew Gutman

(JPFS) JERUSALEM – The Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip called the evacuation of settlements under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for unilateral disengagement an apocalyptic showdown, as it set the stage for what movement leaders called the fight for its life.

August 14, 2005, Gaza’s Gush Katif bloc of settlements alerted reporters Sunday, “is the last day of the existence of Jews in Gush Katif. It also happens to be the Ninth of Av, the day of the destruction of the First and the Second Temples and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.”

The message was hammered home at a 1,000-person rally in Gush Katif Sunday night, with National Religious Party chairman Effi Eitam and council chairman Benzi Lieberman lambasting the NRP’s continued presence in a government that would evacuate Jewish settlements.

The council is deciding on a new strategy to throw thousands of dedicated volunteers into torpedoing Sharon’s plan for taking down Jewish settlements in the 340 sq. km. strip. Its first order of business is toppling Sharon, said settlement leaders and the NRP’s rabbis.

On the wall above council acting general-secretary Yehoshua Mor-Yosef’s desk is a state-distributed picture of Sharon, as the council is a semi-governmental body. The frame is now cracked and Sharon sits askew, barely hanging on the wall.

On the one hand, explained Mor-Yosef, the council needs the NRP to leave the government. But without the NRP, and with Labor in its stead, he said, the hawkish Likud ministers would be rendered powerless.

Nevertheless, the settlement body announced it would throw its weight to driving the NRP out of the government.

Either way, the settlers’ council is done trying to convince the prime minister it is ready for a new one. Gush Katif’s Hof Aza Regional Council debated the issue of how to deal with Sharon late Sunday night, while behind stage officials swapped the names of men they thought suitable.

During the Likud referendum last month, the council managed to disseminate 400 kilometers of banners, not to mention hundreds of thousands of brs, and flags, said Ohad Bratt, the campaign and rally organizer for the council since 1993. His volunteers might have to work harder as the date of the cabinet’s March 2005 discussion on the evacuation of the settlements approaches.

“Our goal is ultimately to reach regular voters like you,” said Bratt to a reporter. “That way, in one or two rounds of elections, going door to door to beg voters will become irrelevant.”

But his volunteers, typically religious men between 20 and 40, are used to fast campaigns. They are the foot-soldiers of the council’s political campaigns, explained Bratt.

The Likud referendum, he said, worked perfectly as thousands of volunteers canvassed the country in a span of two weeks. Now he and his 10, two-man teams have nine months within which to work, and their mission is to bring to their message, not 200,000 Likud voters, but an entire nation.

The activists’ primary objective is reaching rabbis and schools. Rabbis disseminate critical information to their flocks on Shabbat, and schools of the national-religious curriculum offer a vast pool for volunteers and rally-goers from seventh graders on up, said Bratt. But much of the infrastructure for a national campaign comprising rallies, large and small, already exists, and Bratt at any moment can summon activists in almost any town.

The council is an old hand at political activism, a fact that greets visitors to the group’s Jerusalem offices. Banners, leaflets, and blunt slogans, like “Uprooting settlements, a victory for terrorism,” litter the basement offices’ cramped lobby. The offices are modest for a political machine with such power: several cramped rooms, primarily adorned with the council’s own propaganda posters.

In his little office, Bratt describes his final method for victory.

“We are having babies at a much higher rate than the rest of the country. The national-religious camp is growing at such a fast rate that in 15-20 years there will be no choice for Israelis.”

But the key, observed Bratt, is installing a prime minister who possesses “the principles and ethical code of the Land of Israel, rather than pure pragmatism.”
 

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