Middle East: Bombs, Passions and Farewells

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Even though part of Yamit had already been demolished by bulldozers, Israeli authorities kept a grocery store in operation, maintained water and electrical service and allowed a school to remain open. By midweek, the protesters were concentrated in a few places: a concrete air-raid shelter, a 93-ft. tower memorializing Israeli soldiers who died in the 1967 war and three or four rooftops. From a wall, one group draped a biblical quotation: "Is it time for you, O Ye, to dwell in your ceiled houses and this house lie waste?"

The army's assault had been expected at dawn Wednesday, but was delayed by the Israeli Cabinet meeting and by Prime Minister Begin's decision to wait until Rabbi Kahane had returned from the U.S. On hand were some 7,000 Israeli troops, fleets of buses for the evacuees and trucks. The army had even prepared hundreds of strands of plastic cord to be used for tying the hands of violent resisters. In the minds of both soldiers and settlers was the fearful memory of Masada, where 960 beleaguered Jews had chosen death over surrender to the Romans in A.D. 73. Nobody, including Rabbi Kahane, as it turned out, wanted Yamit to turn into a miniature Masada.

Shouting through a ventilation shaft to his followers inside the bunker, Kahane urged them to remain calm and to reject any thought of suicide. When they seemed to be disagreeing with him, he shouted, 'Do you have a rabbi or do you not?" When they replied with a reluctant yes, he told them: "Then I have a student and a son." Later he joined his followers inside the bunker. Tension began to ease, but flared again when the group learned from a radio report that the forced evacuation of the rest of Yamit had .already begun.

Just before 3 p.m., bands of unarmed soldiers started to force their way into apartment buildings and toward the roofs. Amid grappling and pushing, some resisters threw bottles and stones and poured buckets of sand. "We are Jews here," some shouted. "Why are you taking us away from our homes? Shame on you!" As the soldiers crashed axes and crowbars against doors, young protesters threw themselves against the intruders. A woman carrying a year-old baby screamed hysterically at the soldiers. On one roof, a bearded young man in a baseball hat shouted a stream of abuse. When Israeli Deputy Chief of Staff Moshe Levy, who is called "Moshe Vachetsi" (Moshe-and-a-Half) because he is 6 ft. 4 in. tall, came to the site and pleaded for calm and cooperation, the squatters shouted back, "Go away, Moshe Vachetsi!" The soldiers reacted with extraordinary forbearance, urging protesters to leave peacefully. Only once did they use force: they brought in giant cages, hoisted by cranes, to remove militant holdouts from a rooftop. Cried one angry observer: "This is the first time since Herod that cages have been used against Jews!"

Slowly the protest lost its fire. After they were sprayed with streams of white foam, the last resisters on the rooftop were subdued by soldiers who climbed ladders to reach them. The squatters were taken away in buses to army camps or to Beersheba, the nearest Israeli town, don't like what we have to do," remarked young army captain, "but I think the people are wrong to stay here when the government has made the decision to withdraw from Sinai."