Middle East: Bombs, Passions and Farewells

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At midweek, however, the Israeli Cabinet voted to proceed with the Sinai withdrawal on schedule. Soon after that, Israeli soldiers began to remove by force the first of the 2,500 Israeli protesters who had remained in the Sinai settlement of Yamit, a once pleasant town on the Mediterranean coast. In an exceedingly well-planned and carefully executed operation by the Israeli armed forces, the holdouts were removed without any deaths or serious injuries. Bulldozers continued to dismantle most of the last signs of the Israeli occupation—the buildings, streets, even the palm trees and vegetable gardens that the Israelis had planted in the desert. Two days later, on Sunday, April 25, the white and blue flag bearing the Star of David was lowered at Sharm el Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai, bringing the Israeli occupation to an end.

That end did not come gently. Yamit, the largest (pop. 2,400 in 1977) and most prosperous of the Sinai settlements, became the focus of a furious battle over the withdrawal. Of the Jewish protesters left in the town early last week, only a few were settlers who had actually lived there. A larger contingent, organized by the fanatical Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) movement, included settlers from the West Bank who had come to Yamit to protest the Sinai withdrawal. A third group was made up of members of Rabbi Meir Kahane's extremist right-wing Kach movement. Kahane's followers, many of them American-born, were threatening suicide if they were forced by Israeli authorities to leave the Sinai. As the army moved in, Israel's Defense Minister Ariel Sharon (see box) ordered journalists barred from the entire area. Eli Nissan, head of the Israeli Journalists' Association, called the news blackout "an unprecedented act in Israel."

Prime Minister Menachem Begin defended the blackout, saying that it was part of an effort to "prevent bloodshed." He argued that the presence of television cameras and crews in Yamit could lead to "demonstrative tragedies." Unconvinced, Israel's major newspapers left blank spaces on their front pages last week in a gesture of protest against the censorship.

By last Tuesday the agricultural settlements of the northern Sinai had been evacuated. Settlement after settlement had been bulldozed to the ground, the trees uprooted or covered with sand. Even the security fences were removed.

It was, reported TIME's David Halevy, "a land of sand, wind and camels once more." The Israelis left standing the Red Sea resorts of Neviot, Di-Zahav and Sharm el Sheikh. Otherwise, they were remarkably thorough in obliterating the last traces of human habitation in the settlements before they left.

Why such destructiveness? For one thing, the Israelis were fearful that diehard settlers might somehow find their way back and reoccupy their old homes. For another, Israeli defense authorities were apparently reluctant to encourage a large Egyptian population center so close to the Israeli border.