Tensions rose on Tuesday as the crucial date neared for Israel's first-ever evacuation of veteran settlements from Gaza and the West Bank. Jewish extremists held an ancient curse ceremony to call for the death of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon while the military tightened restrictions on entering Gaza to keep more pullout opponents from infiltrating.
On Tuesday a well-known Jewish extremist, Michael Ben Chorin, said he and about 20 others carried out an ancient curse ceremony called pulsa denura, calling death down upon Sharon, author of the pullout plan. The mystical ceremony was conducted in a cemetery in Rosh Pinah in Israel's north, he said.
"We called on God and angels of destruction to kill Sharon as soon as possible," he told Israel Radio.
PHOTO: AP
Jewish ultranationalists cast a similar religious curse against former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin before ultranationalist assassin Yigal Amir gunned him down at a peace rally in 1995.
The pulsa denora ceremony involves the reading by candlelight of medieval mystical texts.
The mainstream settlers council, Israel's chief rabbi and pro-peace groups condemned Ben Chorin and the ceremony.
At a desert military base, thousands of police and soldiers on Tuesday practiced removing Jewish settlers from their homes, in the biggest dress rehearsal yet for next month's Gaza withdrawal.
Also on Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Israel will leave the Gaza-Egypt border road at the end of the pullout, Israel TV reported. Israel holds the road to prevent arms smuggling. Israel has said it would turn patrolling over to Egypt, but no date was set.
Responding to the report, Israeli defense officials said no agreement has been signed with Egypt.
Late on Tuesday, Mofaz met with Palestinian Cabinet minister Mohammed Dahlan to discuss the Israeli pullout, including the fate of settlers' houses. Israel plans to destroy them, but no agreement has been reached about what to do with the rubble.
At the dusty Zeelim army training base in the steaming Negev desert, Israeli troops dragged fellow soldiers playing the role of settlers out of houses in a mock Arab village -- once used for urban warfare drills against Palestinian militants -- and bundled them into buses.
About 5,000 security forces are training at Zeelim this week, and an additional 7,000 next week. In August, another drill will be held at an Israeli communal farm that closely resembles a Gaza settlement.
Paramilitary police lined the open second floor of a cinderblock building as other troops stormed inside, hauling the "settlers" out in a matter of minutes.
Four police or soldiers were assigned to each "settler." Carrying them by arms and legs, the troops hustled them out to buses, as circles of soldiers ringed both the buses and the buildings to keep settlers and other pullout opponents from sneaking back in.
Commanders said about 50,000 police and soldiers will participate in the removal of 9,000 settlers -- 8,500 in Gaza and 500 in four small settlements in the northern West Bank.
The evacuation is to start on Aug. 17 and last about three weeks -- though it could be held up by violence either from settlers or Palestinians.
On Tuesday the military restricted entrance to the Gaza settlements to residents and close relatives. Two weeks ago the government banned most nonresidents from entering, but about 2,000 pullout opponents have sneaked into the territory since then, many as passengers in settlers' cars.
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