42,000 troops deployed in six `rings’ to carry out pullout

By Amos Harel

At midnight on Sunday, the Kissufim crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip will be closed to all Israeli civilian traffic, and on August 15, early Monday morning, a year and a half after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his plan, the disengagement will begin.

About 42,000 soldiers and police officers, divided into at least five divisional command centers, will be deployed. The total number of people involved in the operation could reach 53,000 if additional units are enlisted.

The official schedule calls for a four-week operation, but unofficially the planners hope three weeks will suffice.

Only security forces will be allowed into the Gaza Strip after the closure of Kissufim. On Monday morning, combined teams of soldiers and police officers will fan out into all the settlements in the Gaza Strip and to every home. They will make a record of houses that are already empty, and any remaining residents will be informed that they have 48 hours - until the morning of August 17 - to leave. Anyone who refuses after the deadline will be forcibly removed and also risks losing about 30 percent of their compensation.

From Monday morning to Wednesday morning, the security forces are expecting a massive exodus of Israelis from Gaza - between one-third and two-thirds of the total. The rest will have to be removed by force.

The disengagement forces will be divided into six "rings." The first ring (combining both army and police) will deal with removing the settlers from their homes. The second ring, of Israel Defense Forces soldiers only, is charged with blocking the surrounding roads to prevent anti-withdrawal activists from reaching the settlement being evacuated.

Defending from attack

The third and fourth rings, all army, will defend both civilian and security forces from Palestinian attack. The fifth ring, mostly IDF soldiers, will patrol the Green Line to prevent activists from infiltrating the Strip from Israel. The sixth ring, consisting of police officers, will control traffic on Israeli roads in the western Negev near the Gaza border.

And there is another ring, which no one wants to discuss. It is the "zero ring," which will deal with any violent standoff situations that arise. Brigadier General Amos Ben-Avraham, who the commander of the division unit for this force, avoids the cameras. Senior officers who were willing to talk about it hope it will not be needed, but they know that is an unreasonable expectation.

The order in which the settlements are to be evacuated will not be determined until Monday morning. Several plans of action are possible, including starting with the "easy" settlements in the north where the least opposition is expected, such as Elei Sinai and Dugit, or with the ideological stronghold of Netzarim.

The combined IDF-police teams that will carry out the evacuation of the homes where residents do not leave voluntarily consist of 17 people each, divided into four smaller groups of four soldiers and one police officer, and one team commander. Each home that will be evacuated has already been assigned to a team, which will be given maps and information on all residents and their expected level of opposition.

One half hour will be budgeted to the evacuation of each home, but team commanders can request an extension if needed.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz yesterday gave the final approval to the disengagement plan. In a meeting with senior IDF and police officers, he challenged them to complete the operation in two and a half weeks, by September 4, including the evacuation of the two remaining settlements in the northern Samaria - Sa-Nur and Homesh.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/611641.html