Salon.com > Rebecca Sinderbrand

The last hours of Kerem Atzmona

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 16:28:00 +0000

Yesterday morning in Kerem Atzmona, nearly 400 residents awoke in tents and small homes clustered on top of a hillside close to the sea. By late afternoon, they were gone, replaced by twice as many Israeli soldiers and policemen patrolling the former Gaza settlement. The camp bore signs of family living and a hasty exit: broken toys and half-cooked meals left out in the blistering sun.

As troops approached, a few young men ran. Some families barricaded themselves inside their homes. Others paced the settlement aimlessly, drifting from soldier to soldier. Many were wearing orange Stars of David on their clothing, a controversial protest symbol joining the official color of the anti-disengagement movement with the insignia Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany; one man had a single sleeve pulled up to reveal large blue numbers handwritten on his arm.

Showdown in Gaza

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 19:37:00 +0000

On Tuesday, day two of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the long-predicted clash of Jew vs. Jew finally arrived. As more than 1,000 Israeli soldiers flooded the largest Gaza settlement, Neve Dekalim, settlers and their supporters hurled stones and eggs and verbal abuse at their adversaries, most of them Israelis of the same age. At least 48 demonstrators were arrested, while others took refuge in the synagogue. Despite the hostile encounters, senior Israeli Defense Force officers said they hoped to complete the evacuation of the settlement, the center of opposition to Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan here, within 24 hours. But the real test is to come Wednesday, after the deadline for voluntary evacuation has expired.

On Monday, Tisha B'Av, the holiday that commemorates the tragedies of Jewish history, thousands of soldiers and policemen drawn from units across Israel finally received the detailed disengagement instructions their commanders had distributed. Massed in makeshift camps near Gaza, they pored over the pocket-size handbook covering every element of the operation, from how to respond to settler threats to how to calm a hysterical child. "It's good to see things in writing like this," said Dubi, an Air Force officer, wiping a layer of dust off the bright-green cover. "It makes everything feel a little less chaotic."

DeLay’s fumes cloud energy bill

Thu, 21 Apr 2005 21:38:00 +0000

Methyl tertiary-butyl ether, designed as a clean-air additive for fuel, has turned out to be fairly nasty stuff. Just a few drops of MTBE, as it's known, can make a water supply unusable. In larger concentrations, scientists say, it causes cancer. The chemical, in widespread use for decades, has been detected in nearly 2,000 water systems in 29 states, and that number is still rising. Although the companies involved -- including some of nation's largest oil refineries and suppliers -- have known for more than 20 years that MTBE was fouling waterways, they've been reluctant to get involved in the cleanup and are facing mounting litigation from affected communities.

Now these four little letters are absolutely guaranteed to raise the Bush administration's collective blood pressure as it tries to get an energy bill through Congress. But the MTBE threat the administration is most concerned with isn't environmental; it's political. Once before, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's dogged determination to protect MTBE producers from legal jeopardy dragged the administration's entire energy plan down to defeat. And he's at it again.