Israel pulling out of Gaza Strip
Published 9:08 pm Sunday, January 18, 2009
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli troops, some smiling and dancing, began to withdraw from Gaza on Sunday after their government and Hamas militants declared an end to a three-week war. But neither side achieved long-term goals, and the burden of consolidating the fragile calm fell to world leaders.
The truce brought relief to Gaza’s citizens, who took stock of the devastation in relative safety for the first time since Israel launched the offensive on Dec. 27. And it brought more trauma, as rescue workers in surgical masks ventured into what were once no-go areas and pulled 100 bodies from buildings pulverized by bombs.
Tension eased in southern Israel, the target of Palestinian rocket fire, even though Hamas launched nearly 20 rockets in a final salvo before announcing a cease-fire. Three Israelis were lightly wounded, while two Palestinians were killed in last-minute fighting, medics said.
Israel and Hamas do not recognize each other and ended up separately declaring cease-fires 12 hours apart after strenuous efforts by Egyptian mediators to get an agreement. Israel first announced a unilateral cease-fire that took effect early Sunday, with Hamas initially vowing to keep fighting until all troops left Gaza.
Later Sunday, Hamas also said it would hold its fire at least one week to give Israeli forces time to pull out.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his country had no desire to stay in Gaza, a Mediterranean strip of 1.4 million people that was vacated by Israel in 2005 even though Gaza’s airspace, coastal waters and border crossings remained under Israeli control.
“We didn’t set out to conquer Gaza. We didn’t set out to control Gaza. We don’t want to remain in Gaza, and we intend on leaving Gaza as fast as possible,” Olmert said.
The world welcomed the apparent end to the latest round of fighting in the Middle East. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged a quick influx of humanitarian aid to the isolated enclave, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said a cease-fire must be durable.
The Israeli military warned that the next few days were critical and that any Hamas attacks would be met with harsh retaliation.
“Right now the operation hasn’t ended,” Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel said. “It has just transitioned to a new phase, to hold fire. To give a chance to a cease-fire to take over and end this operation.”
Israel emerged as the winner on the battlefield. But its chief goals — a permanent end to rocket attacks on Israel and weapons smuggling into Gaza — will require hard diplomacy and sustained international cooperation to achieve.
Hamas, meanwhile, lost hundreds of fighters. It hopes that its survival will boost its standing among Arab supporters as a foe, as well as righteous victim, of the Jewish state.
While both sides put their best spin on the conflict’s seeming conclusion, noncombatants were the biggest losers. More than half of the 1,259 slain Palestinians were civilians, according to medics, human rights groups and the U.N.
At least 13 Israelis, 10 of them soldiers, were killed, according to Israel. Hamas fired hundreds of rockets at southern Israel, intensifying the fear of hundreds of thousands of people who had lived under the threat for years.
