GAZA, BY DAVID SILVERMAN

Disengagement – Part II

photos: David Silverman/Getty Images


One week later: I have seen the fall of Gush Katif, and the beginning of the end of 38 years of Israeli occupation.

It was meant to take six weeks to evacuate all the Israelis out of the twenty-one Gaza Strip settlements, but in just five days, the strongholds of Neve Dekalim and Kfar Darom, along with a dozen others, are now no more than collections of empty houses and deserted streets waiting to be bulldozed into the pages of history.

Despite the magnitude of the events of recent days, what comes back to me again and again are the varied emotions that I have felt while covering the evacuations.

I felt extreme anger at the extremist settlers who walked out of their home in Kerem Atzmona, hands held up in surrender, like the famous picture of a young Jewish boy in a second world war Nazi ghetto.

I was moved to tears by the faith and resolve of a Jewish family sitting on their living-room floor reciting prayers for the dead – for their home and settlement – as weeping Israeli soldiers waited with patience and understanding to escort them to a waiting bus.

And yet, if I had to choose one image, I would pick the general view of the Israeli police attack against the hundreds of militant settlers holed up inside and barricaded on the roof of the Kfar Darom synagogue.

c David Silverman
Staff Photographer
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