The settlements have left Gaza and are heading for the West Bank, writes Graham Usher from Sanur Israel's evacuation of 25 settlements in Gaza and the West Bank finished this week not with a bang but a whimper -- many hundreds of them. On 22 August Israel ended its 35-year civilian colonisation of Gaza with the removal of Netzarim. The following day, in the northern West Bank, amid tear gas and water riot police stormed the roof of Sanur settlement's Ottoman fort in a choreographed operation that allowed the settlers to protest and the police to conquer. By sunset of both days the settlers had been disgorged -- nearly two weeks ahead of schedule, with a lot of trauma but minimum injury. Palestinians viewed it all quietly, with a large dose of cynicism but also with relief, especially in Gaza. Of all the settlements there Netzarim was the most despised. This was not because of its inhabitants. Unlike their brethren in Gush Katif (who had a habit of torching Palestinian crops when things got rough), Netzarim's settlers were introverted rather than zealous. It was rather because to shield their quiet and pastoral existence the army deployed three battalions, transforming Netzarim into a military base that, at the drop of an order, could cut Gaza into two or more isolated enclaves. For Palestinians in neighbouring Gaza City and Zahra village Netzarim will be remembered not for its red-tiled villas but for its khaki-green watchtower. It was from here that bulldozers were sent to reduce some of Gaza's most productive land into a scorched moonscape. That watchtower also claimed 114 Palestinian lives, including, in August 2002, Ruweida Al-Hajin and two of her sons, killed by flechette shells that cut them to ribbons. Netzarim was also the target of some of the Palestinian most daring armed operations, burning into the Israeli consciousness that Netzarim was not only indefensible morally but also militarily. It is not surprising that Hamas is leading a campaign to have Netzarim renamed "Sheikh Ahmed Yassin". If Netzarim embodied the military function of the settlements, Sanur represented the ideological, its defenders a lethal mutant of militarism and Messianism. For weeks fears had been stoked in the Israeli press that the most violent showdown would be in Sanur, the one place where "something very bad is liable to develop", according to Israel's disengagement commissar, Yonatan Bassi. But there was no violence against Israeli Jews. There was violence against Palestinian Arabs. The settlers in Sanur may not have been personally responsible for the "provocation" killings of Palestinians in Shfaram and Shilo. But those who were had the same mindset and were of the same ilk. That mindset was on display when police and soldiers entered Sanur on 23 August, outnumbering the settlers by 10 to one. It could be seen in the young women, dressed in striped Holocaust smocks, kicking and spitting as they were taken, one by one, to the coaches. It was there, in the fist of National Union MP Aryeh Eldad, raised defiantly on the roof of the fort before being dowsed in a wash of water cannon. Most disturbingly of all it could be heard from an orange painted girl -- no more than six -- who screamed at police trying to remove her from a roof. "I am going in a jeep and I am going to kill Arabs," she yelled. The established settler leadership may have been alarmed by the language and the speed of the collapse but believed the "resistance" had served its purpose. "This expulsion has raised people's consciousness about the necessity to settle Judea and Samaria (the West Bank)," said Benzl Lieberman, head of the Settler Council. Ariel Sharon may be thinking along similar lines, even though his final map of the West Bank may differ from Lieberman's. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post on 22 August, Sharon paid homage to the settlements and gave clues to his vision of Israel's eastern border. "Because of the settlements we can pray at the Cave of the Patriarchs (in Hebron)," he said. If not for the settlement movement "it would not have been possible to renew the settlement in Gush Etzion (near Bethlehem) or incorporate Rachel's Tomb (in Bethlehem) inside Jerusalem's fence; or have Maale Adumim (near Jerusalem) and its satellites, Beit El, Shilo, the Ariel bloc or the security zone overlooking the coastal plain." This is not simply a vision. Last week the Israeli army began issuing expropriation orders to build the West Bank wall around Maale Adumim "and its satellites". If built as routed, Maale Adumim will divide the West Bank as surgically as Netzarim did to Gaza. The aim now is to people the new border, with the settlers again playing the role of pioneers. Contrary to promises made to the US, the settlers in Gaza are not being relocated in the Negev and Galilee. Many of them are going to the West Bank. Netzarim, for example, has decamped in Ariel. Gaza's Morag and Shirat Hayam settlements are en route to Ofra and Kadumim. Ariel, Ofra and Kadumim are all settlements deep in the heart of the West Bank. "We don't move anyone, people can go wherever they want," said Sharon. This is why most Palestinians were underwhelmed by the spectacle of the evacuation, even in villages like Al-Assasa. For the last 26 years its 700 residents have had their lives, lands and livelihoods blighted due to their proximity to Sanur. They are glad to see the back of the zealots. But they know the army will stay and that the occupation continues. "It's simply moving on," said Khaled Al-Assasa.
