Some 150,000 disengagement opponents gathered in Rabin Square in central Tel Aviv on Thursday evening to protest against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.
An estimated 1,000 buses brought in protesters from all over Israel.
Earlier police assessments had predicted only 50,000 protesters would come to demonstrate.
 |
Advertisement |
|
Leaders of the Yesha Council of settlements presented to the crowd the settlers' plan - called "Orange Dawn" - to prevent the disengagement from taking place.
One leader, Tzvika Bar-Hai, told the protesters to make their way to Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip "on Monday by car, by bus, and by foot. We will then leave for the entrances into Gush Katif.
"We will not be stopped at checkpoints, we will bypass them from the right and from the left. We will not raise a hand against police and army personnel, we will reach our destination by use of our bodies and with our children. We will not confront anyone," Bar-Hai told the crowd.
"Neither the blows of police or the batons of Border Police will deter us. We will glue ourselves to the ground until the prime minister faces the people and tells them he will hold new elections," he added.
Yesha Council chairman Bentzi Lieberman also called for new Knesset elections at the rally and said the settlers would have accepted a decision to withdraw from Gaza if it had been made democratically.
Participants received instructions on how to begin their protest after the Tisha B'Av fast, which ends Sunday night.
One of the key directives is for long convoys to arrive at the Kissufim crossing, the entrance to Gush Katif, and prevent any access to it by evacuating forces.
The Yesha Council said that as Kissufim crossing is the main "oxygen pipe" into Gush Katif, tens of thousands of protesters preventing movement through it it would cause substantial delays to "the expulsion machine," as Lieberman called the disengagement plan Wednesday.
Settler leaders learned from recent events in Kfar Maimon and Ofakim, and decided on a change of strategy: they are beginning to surrender the dream of bringing tens of thousands into Gush Katif but are opting to focus efforts on preventing security forces from reaching the settlements to be evacuated.
Rally participants were given instructions on where to report before heading out in convoys to Gush Katif as soon as the disengagement begins.
The four main meeting points will be Ashkelon, Ofakim, Sderot and Netivot.
The council claims there are several other locations that will not be revealed at present.
Protesters were also to receive details on how to enter Gush Katif easily despite the closure order issued by the Israel Defense Forces' GOC Southern Command.
At least 2,000 security officers and volunteers were deployed to Rabin Square and positioned on rooftops surrounding the area in case of violence.
Dozens of police and volunteers were also posted at the memorial to Yitzhak Rabin, the Labor prime minister assassinated by extreme right-winger Yigal Amir during a peace rally at the square in 1995.
The Tel Aviv demonstration comes in the wake of a mass prayer protest attended by 70,000 anti-pullout protesters at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening.
Yuval Porat, the main strategist for the Yesha Council, said the next stage would be "to send hundreds of groups" of protesters on Monday to break through army roadblocks to enter Gaza to help settlers there resist the pullout nonviolently
|
