Pullout's opponents protest Israeli settlement blockades

BY DANIELLE HAAS, Of The Associated Press

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Transcribed from the clipping

KISSUFIM JUNCTION, Gaza Strip • Israeli troops sealed off a cluster of Gaza Strip settlements marked for evacuation yesterday to stop the influx of hard-line opponents, the government's most sweeping measure yet to prepare for next month's pullout. Settlers responded defiantly, threatening to block roads throughout Israel and to step up other protests.

Also yesterday, Israeli troops reoccupied the northern West Bank town of Tulkarem in response to a suicide bombing that killed four Israeli people in the resort town of Netanya a day earlier. A firefight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian police in Tulkarem left one police officer dead and a second critically wounded.

Soldiers arrested six people, including the father of the bomber. Palestinian officials strongly condemned the bombing. Palestinian officials, as well as most militant groups, want to maintain calm ahead of Israel's planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements next month.

In preparation for the pullout, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the settlements closed to all nonresidents. Residents would still be able to move in and out of the settlements freely, the army said.

Soldiers set up roadblocks at the Kissufim crossing into the Gush Katif cluster of settlements in Gaza to enforce the order, causing a traffic jam of settler cars, army trucks and police vehicles. The soldiers turned away anyone without a residence permit.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

See the note on s065_1: the two images on this slide are in the reverse order from Maria's label. This is the Patriot-News item. No masthead, no folio, no printed date on the clipping, so the date is label-only; the internal chronology (Netanya bombing 'a day earlier', Tulkarem reoccupied 'yesterday') is consistent with 14 July 2005. There is no deck.

The paper uses a bullet • after the dateline. Golan's Tulkarem quote here differs from the Chicago Tribune's wording on the same day — 'Palestinian Islamic Jihad' not 'Islamic Jihad', 'told Israel's Army Radio' not 'told Army Radio'.

The clipping says four Israelis were killed at Netanya; the Chicago Tribune of the same date says four were killed and a fourth woman died of her wounds, giving slightly different arithmetic.

Photo caption: 'A Jewish settler scuffles with soldiers yesterday as settlers and protesters block the Kissufim crossing into the Gush Katif bloc of settlements in the southern Gaza Strip.' (BAZ RATNER, The Associated Press).

Columns two and three were read at page magnification only; the Sharon, Harel, Sternberg and Ben-Ruby quotes should be re-checked against a crop before any is published.

Cite this clipping

"Pullout's opponents protest Israeli settlement blockades," The Patriot-News, 14 July 2005. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2005-027. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2005-027