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Settling the Land

'I vow we shall return'


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
August 24, 2005

A day after he was expelled from the northern Samaria settlement of Sa-Nur under the ?disengagement? plan, Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad (National Union Party) swore that the Jews who had so cruelly lost their homes would return to them one day.

Eldad (55), a distinguished medical professor who bears the added distinction of having attained to the rank of IDF Brigadier-General before entering politics, also committed himself to working for the ouster of Ariel Sharon, the architect of the expulsion initiative.

Having moved to the threatened Sa-Nur settlement a few months ago in order to stand with its people against the looming expulsion, Eldad was on the roof of a British-era stronghold when thousands of soldiers and police moved in to remove the community.

Standing behind a large banner proclaiming ?Cursed is he who evicts his brother,? Eldad used a megaphone to call on the forces below, urging them to disobey orders to uproot the Jews from the biblical heartland of their nation.

He defied the calls that he climb down, saying the only way he would leave the roof was ?in a cage.?

When resistance on the roof was finally overcome, and while his daughter wept her disappointment and hurt next to him, Eldad declared with an emotion-choked voice that the struggle had ?only begun.?

?We will throw Sharon out and I vow: We will return to here,? he said.

Leftist writer Ari Shavit disagrees: Speaking in a conversation with a CNN reporter, Shavit predicted that ?the disengagement will create such dramatic changes that it would be ?impossible to go back to the old status quo.?

Earlier, Eldad had expressed his frustration at the press? insistence on fabricating stories of arms caches the settlers in Sa-Nur would purportedly use against their fellow Jews.

There had been a campaign to demonize the settlers, ?saying that we are amassing weapons and preparing for war,? he said.

Those mischievous rumors were exposed when the vast majority of residents and their supporters refused to be goaded into acts of violence against those coming to drag them from their homes.

Instead of leaving with fists or bullets flying, they went with tears on their cheeks and prayers ascending from their lips.

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