The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has held its first official victory celebration, wasting no time after the Israeli army reported that the last Gaza settlement was evacuated on Monday. The movement’s leaders seized the opportunity of the demonstration to reiterate their right to continue their resistance and their refusal to disarm. About 30,000 Palestinians rallied throughout Gaza City on Monday night in the largest celebration so far since the beginning of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The rally also marked the anniversary of the attempted burning of al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem in 1969 and the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Abu-Shanab. Read more about Hamas rally celebrates Gaza 'victory' 

The Israeli political and military establishment didn’t just put a donkey, a goat and a cow into the Palestinian lands they put in the whole zoo. This morning I received an e-mail from a friend in Washington D.C. He expressed his sympathy for the Israeli settlers who he had watched being removed from their homes. It is his birthday today. I thought that rather then e-mail him a moral lesson all the way from the Gaza Strip or tell him the stories of the 30,000 Palestinians who lost their homes during this Intifada I would send him an old Jewish proverb that sums up the situation in Palestine one week after the start of the redeployment. Read more about Disengagement: "A donkey, a goat and a cow" 

Last December I turned up at a border crossing
leading from Israel to the infamous Gaza strip as
part of a delegation of Catholic development
agencies. I was looking forward to the visit, to seeing
first-hand the situation in which thousands of
Palestinians were living. But four hours later I walked
away, together with half the group, refused entry by
Israeli security because our papers for entry did
not have the required approvals. While the
Palestinians living within this small piece of land
could not get out, I could not get in. Trócaire’s Director Justin Kilcullen writes of the bleak and harrowing conditions facing the thousands of Palestinians living in the Gaza strip, where they are effectively prisoners behind barbed wire fence. Read more about Gaza strip: An open air prison? 

The government of Israel once again expressed its disregard for international law and the United Nations system during the 33rd Session1 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which oversees the implementation of the UN Convention on Women. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, at its thirty-third session in New York, offered strong criticisms of Israel and its policies, particularly concerning the treatment of Palestinian women. Israel’s - almost predictable - response was simply that the UN Women’s Convention, which it ratified in 1991, “only extended to Israel” and not the Occupied Territories. Jeff Handmaker offers a brief assessment. Read more about UN’s Committee on Women criticizes Israel 

Palestinian communities living near Jewish settlements are bracing themselves for a month-long Israeli-imposed closure set to start on Tuesday. Residents of the Maani area of Dair al-Balah, adjacent to the colony of Kfarm Darom in the central Gaza Strip, were lining up in front of the gate to their fenced in community on Monday morning, waiting for Israeli approval to enter ahead of the closure. Abdullah Maani, 34, said residents were allowed out of the village for a few hours to buy food and supplies before the closure would be enforced, adding that they had yet to see any evidence of a withdrawal. “If we weren’t hearing it from the radio and television stations, you would think there is no withdrawal going on.” Read more about Palestinians under withdrawal curfew 

At the edge of the Khan Yunus refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, crumbling refugee homes face off with the red-roofed seafront villas of the Neve Dekalim settlement. The settlement, one of 21 chosen for evacuation in coming months, has been the source of much grief - and now speculation - for Palestinians here. Abo Ahmed’s home stands directly across from Neve Dekalim, the largest and most ideologically extreme of the Gush Katif settlements, a bloc established in 1970 - three years after Gaza was captured and occupied by Israel. Not far from the settlement is an Israeli sniper tower, stationed along with hundreds of soldiers, to protect the illegal settlers from their Palestinian neighbours and original inhabitants of the land. Read more about Gazans cautious, but eager for pullout 

Palestinians are greeting Israel’s pullout from the Gaza strip with high hopes but some anxiety, as the first televised images of settlers leaving are broadcast. “Pictures are now being broadcast to the world of what we thought would never happen. The withdrawal is now beginning,” said Palestinian Minister of Information Nabil Shaath earlier on Sunday. “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 form total disbelief to anxious belief,” said Shaath. But he added that there were still many unanswered questions and that coordination between the Israelis and Palestinians was minimal if not non-existent. Read more about Palestinians hopeful but anxious 

As Israel has begun its unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a number of Palestinian intellectuals have urged the Palestinian Authority and resistance groups to tone down celebrations and pay attention to Israel’s expansion in the West Bank. The calls came as the latest coordination meeting between Palestinian security minister Nasr Yousuf and Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, which took place on Sunday night, failed to resolve the outstanding issues pertaining to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Yousuf accused Israel of refusing to provide satisfactory answers for some of the most fundamental questions pertaining to the post-withdrawal arrangements at border crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Read more about Palestinians urged to temper festivities 

There is certainly something in the air. Gunfire, cheering - general celebrations. Outside the al Shawa Convention Centre in the heart of el-Rimal distract of Gaza City there are marches - last night by Islamic Jihad - to celebrate the redeployment of the Israeli military. On Friday Fatah held another demonstration in Gaza City. Hamas have been practising for redeployment all week by letting off random explosions. Each side is trying to claim the redeployment for its own. The PLO Flag Shop in Gaza City is decked out with special t-shirts celebrating what they call “withdrawal”. There are Palestinian flags hanging outside the shop with “FREE GAZA” printed on them in black. Read more about Disengagement diary 

Tension is rising in East Jerusalem as thousands of Jewish extremists have vowed to storm the Haram al-Sharif compound, one of Islam’s holiest sites, ahead of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The threats coincide on Sunday with the annual commemoration of the destruction of an ancient Jewish temple, considered one of the bleakest days in the Jewish calendar. A mass gathering of extremist Jews is scheduled in Jerusalem’s Old City. Hundreds of police officers and paramilitary troops have been deployed in and around the Old City to prevent a possible clash between Jewish extremists and Palestinian Muslims. Thousands of Muslims already have arrived at the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, compound to repulse any attempts to storm it. Read more about Jerusalem tense ahead of Gaza pullout