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Palestinian Arabs

Arabs celebrate 'morning of liberation'


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
August 15, 2005

Palestinian Authority-controlled television kicked off its morning broadcast Monday under the headline ?A morning of evacuation and liberation,? marking the start of Israel's ?disengagement? from Gaza and northern Samaria.

The broadcast was accompanied by patriotic songs denying the Jews the right to settle in their ancient homeland.

?Pictures are now being broadcast to the world of what we thought would never happen,? PA Minister Nabil Sha?ath told the Arab news service Al Jazeera.

?There is a sense of happiness, relief, pleasure, mixed in with anxiety. The withdrawal is becoming a reality, no longer a conjecture. We are moving from total disbelief to anxious belief.?

The PA deployed 7,500 armed troops around Jewish Gaza Monday morning, some less than 200 meters from Jewish homes.

Their placement is meant to ensure Arab quiet during the process in order to convey a sense of order and civility before the international community by preventing celebratory Arab marches on, and confrontations with, the withdrawing Israelis.

But reports indicated an atmosphere of chaos and anarchy persists in the ?Palestinian? areas. Mosque loudspeakers across the area were reportedly calling Muslims to pray and rejoice in the Israeli departure.

Efforts by rival terrorist gangs to publicly take credit for the Israeli retreat could lead to open violence, which Israel insists would elicit a severe IDF response.

At least two mortars were fired early Monday into one of the Jewish towns slated for evacuation. No injuries were reported.

Meanwhile, leader of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hizballah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, warmly congratulated the Palestinian Arabs on their achievement in driving the Israelis from Gaza and northern Samaria.

Israel's flight from southern Lebanon in May 2000 while under Hizballah fire is widely recognized as inspiring the current five-year ?Palestinian? terrorist war.

Nasrallah urged the Palestinian Arabs to continue the fight until all the land is ?liberated? from Jewish rule.

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