Maof

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=83393

Police appear to be at a loss to deal with the ideals and motivation of the anti-disengagement protestors.

One yeshiva high school junior who spent eight days in prison after passively participating in a road-blocking wrote on the Ynet Hebrew news site yesterday as follows:

"I'll tell you frankly: I wasn't supposed to be [arrested]. I was arrested for nothing. Really. But I'm not sorry for one second that I was there! To me, those 'law-breakers' gave so much... How fortunate I was to be there... to be arrested for the struggle for the Land of Israel...

"The Sabbath that I had there in prison - I don't remember such a Shabbat in my life. Such righteous boys and girls! What an amazing and uplifting Kabbalat Shabbat [Friday evening prayer service]! ... I don't think there was one person there [in jail] who hasn't gone on the face-to-face campaign [of meeting people in their homes and explaining to them about Gush Katif, Judaism, etc. - ed.] at least five times. So whoever thinks that these road-blockers don't care about the People of Israel, should sit on the side and learn from them about true love of their fellow Jew. Even in jail they tried to do the face-to-face campaign. We did it with the jailers, with other prisoners, with police officers, etc.

"The commander of the Maasiyahu Prison told MK Effie Eitam, who came to visit us, that he hopes his own children will be like us! Did you ever see such a conflict? The jailer wants his children to be 'law-breakers' like us!"

MK Amir Peretz, running for chairman of the left-wing Labor Party, has warm - and jealous - words of praise for the anti-disengagement protestors: "Look at how those 15- and 16-year-old settlers go around and knock on every door. It creates identification, it creates closeness... [They] come with sparks in their eyes."

He made these remarks last night at a parlor meeting in Ramat HaSharon in the framework of his campaign, criticizing the laid-back attitude of the left-wing camp. "They're good at sitting on the grass and singing songs of brotherhood," Peretz said, "but that's not enough."

The latest anti-disengagement protest act took place last night, at Zikim in the western Negev. Unknown persons, apparently not youths, vandalized several bulldozers that were to be used in breaking ground for a caravan site for the Gush Katif refugees, and for preparing new army bases for those that will be removed from Katif.

A Bedouin guard at the site was the only witness. He said that a group of some 15 people arrived during the night by car, warned him not to try to stop them, and proceeded to pour sugar and sand inside the fuel tanks of the heavy equipment. The vehicles will be out of commission for at least a few days, disrupting the already tight disengagement schedule.

The vehicles were also spray-painted in orange, the color of the struggle against the expulsion, as well as phrases such as, "No destruction of Katif."

An army commander at the site said that those disengagement opponents who perpetrated the act said the butt of their objections should not be the army, but rather the "political echelons."

The army and police will be charged with the actual expulsion of citizens from their homes, and oppressing citizens' protests and efforts to prevent the disengagement.

A yarmulke-clad police officer named David Bitan, from the southern development town of Ofakim, has been charged with putting out the fires of civil disobedience. He plans to visit all the yeshiva high schools in the south and attempt to convince the youth to abandon their ways. He says he will explain the importance of keeping the law in general, as well as the personal price that each student is liable to pay, such as jail and a criminal record, for his actions.

Bitan said that one yeshiva high school principal said that he personally is not in favor of road-blockings and the like, but that he cannot stop students from engaging in these activities. "To me, as the representative of the police," Bitan said, "this response is not acceptable."

By warning of the personal price the youth might have to pay, the police might be missing the point, as evidenced by the above-quoted student's article. "We are perfectly willing to pay this personal price," many of them have said in recent weeks and months. Over 500 of them were arrested three weeks ago when highways were blocked all over the country, and several of them remain in prison even now.

Russian version