Gaza scenarios

On Tuesday night up to 25,000 Israeli opponents of the Gaza disengagement
plan gathered at Sderot in the Negev, close to the Gaza border to
demonstrate their opposition. Sderot is in range of Palestinian rockets,
and so the Israeli Government specifically asked the PA to ensure that no
rockets were fired at that time at Sderot, since the casualties could have
been terrible. Although the PA gave an assurance that no rockets would be
fired, nevertheless Islamic Jihad did fire three rockets. However, one of
the rockets went astray and landed in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, hitting
a house and killing 6 year old Yasser al Ashkar and injuring nine other
children. Among the wounded are the wife and four sons of former PA Minister
of Prisoner Affairs Hisham Abdel Razek. One might call this ironic justice.
The PA Minister for Civil Affairs Mohammed Dahlan criticized Islamic Jihad
and said they were worse than the Israelis because they killed their own
people. After the firings Islamic Jihad announced that they would adhere to
the PA ceasefire during the disengagement. They also said that since Israel
was withdrawing from Gaza they might be prepared to recognize the existence
of Israel.
Meanwhile the anti-disengagement demonstrators moved south east to Ofakim in
the Negev, further away from Gaza and out of range of the rockets. About
50,000 IDF and Israeli police have been deployed to guard the entrances to
Gaza and are under orders to prevent any demonstrators from reaching Gush
Katif, the major settlement bloc in southern Gaza, that is due to be
evacuated in about 2 weeks from now (Aug 15-17). Over 250 youths have
managed to infiltrate northern Gaza settlements. Even though the
demonstrations have been mainly peaceful so far, there is no doubt that some
groups of anti-disengagement activists will try to break through this
cordon, with unforeseen consequences. Before Aug 17 if the settlers agree
to leave they will get full compensation, but after that if they refuse to
leave and have to be physically removed they will be giving up their right
to be compensated.
Only now has the PA officially recognized the Israeli withdrawal, and while
announcing that they regard this as the first step in a total Israeli
withdrawal from all Palestinian territories, nevertheless they are
cooperating with the IDF and plan to coordinate the movement of their forces
into the evacuated areas to ensure that there is no violence, looting or
takeovers by other militias. They are even organizing coach trips for their
people afterwards to view their new acquisitions. However, the houses in
the settlements evacuated will be demolished by Israel, with PA and UN
agreement. They will then take the debris and use it in the reconstruction
of housing for their own people. Maybe some of the inhabitants of Gaza will
no longer be housed in what have been called camps for a change.
Also, 750 Egyptian border guards have arrived to start guarding the
Philadelphi route, that separates Gaza from Egypt, when the IDF withdraws.
Many Israelis have misgivings about this agreement. First, it reintroduces
armed Egyptian forces at the Gaza border, after over 20 years of Sinai being
demilitarized under the Israel-Egyptian peace treaty. Second, arms
smuggling into Gaza has been going on from Egypt without any apparent
preventive steps taken by the Egyptian authorities. Now that they will have
their own armed guards at the border no one thinks they will do a better job
at preventing arms getting into Gaza, in fact it is likely that they will
cooperate with the PA in passing heavier weapons across the border. What
will Israel do if they find proof that Egypt is breaking the agreement to
stop such arms smuggling? This is a very worrying scenario.