By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
Aug 18, 2005
Hundreds of evacuation troops entered the Gaza Strip town of Kfar Darom Wednesday, targeting for expulsion a Jewish community long-admired for withstanding frequent Arab attacks, and often labeled ?hardline? because of its residents? unwillingness to compromise their biblical faith.
Situated about 16km south of Gaza City, Kfar Darom is home to 365 people, many of them young families.
One of them is the Cohen family, a family in Israel?s historical priestly line; a family with three courageous, special children.
Yisrael, Tehila and Orit were all maimed in a roadside bomb attack on their school bus on November 20, 2000, shortly after the Palestinian Arabs launched their second ?Intifada? ? a terror war that has taken the lives of over 1,000 Israelis and wounded thousands more.
When their bus blew up, at the gates of the settlement in front of their watching parents, Orit lost her foot, Yisrael lost one leg below the knee and Tehila lost both legs.
Despite that terrible cost, they chose, after undergoing surgery and therapy near Tel Aviv, to return to Kfar Darom, determined to abide in their faith in the scriptures, which promise this land to the Jewish people. Determined also that no terrorists, no bombs, would scare them away.
Many other children in the community have lost parents in Arab terrorism too, and chose to stay on.
But where ?Palestinian? hatred of the Jews could not drive them out, these brave Israeli kids will leave, today or in the coming days, because they have been driven out by their own government; expelled by their own people.
The man behind the school bus bombing, Palestinian Authority minister Mohammed Dahlan, is the one Israel?s government is working together with to irreversibly turn over to the Arabs the Cohen's land ? and all other Jewish lands in Gaza and northern Samaria.
Carrying out this policy, up to 5,000 security men and women poured into the town Wednesday morning, some going from home to home, threatening to break down doors of those families that had barricaded themselves in.
The majority massed around the main synagogue in which were gathered hundreds of Jews, many of whose homes in Judea and Samaria face a similar future fate to those in the Gaza Strip, and who had come to Kfar Darom in solidarity with its inhabitants and to try ward off the blow they fear will befall them too.
Hours, and at least one ultimatum, passed as the two sides faced off. Some of the civilians prayed inside the house of worship, others sat and stood on its roof, which they had lined with razor wire to prevent the police from reaching them.
Established as a Jewish kibbutz (collective farm) in 1946, Kfar Darom along with the Gaza Strip fell to the invading Egyptian armies two years later during Israel?s War of Independence. It returned to Israel's control during the 1967 Six Day War, and was reestablished as a Jewish town several years later.
Today, August 18, 2005, it is scheduled to be surrendered once again.
?Kfar Darom will be cleared by evening,? declared the IDF's OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel before noon.