Gaza City, Gaza Strip – Thousands of Palestinians rushed into the former Jewish settlements of the Gaza Strip on Monday in a mood of elation, vengeance and opportunism, turning them into venues of celebration, and intensive scavenging for items of potential value and souvenirs of Israel’s departure.
The Palestinians’ first forays in the former Israeli-controlled area hurt official Palestinian hopes that what the Israelis left behind might form the foundation of a better economy, easing the way for effective self-government in the poor coastal strip.
Israeli troops left overnight, ending Israel’s 38-year military hold on the Gaza Strip and the 21 former Jewish communities.
Men and women, young and old, rushed the settlements soon after the last Israeli soldiers passed through the Kissufim crossing a little before 7 a.m., locking the gate behind them.
“The children want to know what happened to the trees,” said Yasser Nawas, 36, an engineer from the Nusseirat refugee camp, who took his four small children Monday morning to get an early glimpse.
Nawas walked in the small phalanx of his children, under skies filled with acrid black smoke, along roads lined with uprooted pine trees. Amid piles of rubble that last month were comfortable homes, Palestinian men collected coils of cable, aluminum window frames, plastic water tanks and street lights, loading them on donkey-drawn carts.
“I brought them to know the place they have been deprived of,” said Nawas, who bears a small bruise on his forehead that is a mark of Muslim devotion. “I’m not surprised by the destruction I’ve seen. But I am shocked by these uncivilized acts. I was expecting celebrations, something for the kids to see.”
While abandoning the territory, Israel will maintain control over its border with Gaza, and Palestinian officials say that means the occupation has not ended. But settlement streets were taken over by various armed militias, all claiming a share of credit for the unilateral Israeli departure from land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War.
Egyptian troops, meanwhile, have deployed along Gaza’s southern border. Palestinian officials said Egyptian border guards shot and killed a Palestinian man identified as Nafiz Ateyah, 34. Officials said the shooting occurred while Egyptian police were trying to control crowds along the border in the Gaza city of Rafah, where dozens of Palestinians managed to come across Monday after months of being prevented from doing so.
In some of the former settlements, Palestinians scuffled occasionally amid the rubble, prompting police to intervene with batons and warning shots. While the day was largely free of violence, the former synagogues that the Israeli government decided to leave intact were vandalized and at least four of the about two dozen synagogue buildings were set ablaze.
Palestinian authorities later bulldozed some of the former synagogues, symbols to many Palestinians of the Israeli occupation.
