With Israeli forces still positioned outside, local inhabits skeptically responded to the alleged withdrawal

By Yasser Al Banna & Mohammed Yaseen

BETHLEHEM, July 3 (IslamOnline.net) – Few hours after Israeli army transferred security of this West Bank city to Palestinian authorities, local inhabitants on Wednesday, July 2, reacted halfheartedly towards the step as “insincere” and “sham”

“It is a trick, a lie, as the pullout is just a sham,” said Um Mohamed, 40, after Israeli tanks were seen rolling out of the city for the first time since November 2002.

But as Israeli forces are still in position of the city’s peripheries, Um Mohamed slammed the highly-touted withdrawal as “feigned”

“Israeli forces have been stationed outside, but they used to thrust into for setting up checkpoints and carrying out house-to-house searches and detaining inhabitants,” the triste 40-year-old woman said.

Gebril Gubran also did not rule an Israeli military return to the city as “they are still not far away from us and may at any time push into our areas and close roads.”

Regardless of the pullout from the city, travel into and out of Bethlehem will continue to be restricted by Israeli forces.

To move from his village to neighboring Bethlehem – only ten kilometers far, Atef said that he has to take more than one transportation means, in addition to crossing into Israeli checkpoints.

“So nothing has changed,” he lamented.

On Sunday, June 29, Israeli forces pulled out of some reoccupied areas in the northern Gaza Strip and transferred security responsibilities there to the Palestinian services and reopened the main road linking the north of the strip to the south.

But on Thursday, Israel closed the junction and assassinated a Palestinian activist, despite an earlier promises not to do so after Palestinian factions called a temporary truce.

‘Illusionary’

Palestinian factions also shared the locals’ feelling of the lack of seriousness in the Israeli pullout, citing earlier examples in which the Jewish state violated its pompously-trumpeted measures.

“So, the Bethlehem pullout is rather illusionary and only intended to give a better image of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s intentions before the world opinion,” said Mahmoud Al-Hindi, a leader of the Islamic Jihad.

“They leave these mostly overpopulated cities for nothing but to control them from the outside,” he added.

Hindi said that what Palestinian want is “an end to occupation of all their areas and a halt to other forms of aggressions,” against them.

For Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar, the pullout is “a facelift” of the Jewish state and an attempt to force the Palestinian government into ending resistance to occupation.

“These agreements give the impression that Israel carries out the roadmap peace plan and that the Palestinian Authority should in return carry out its responsibilities set in the plan, including disarming resistance fighters, dismantling their groups and detaining them,” Al-Zahar said.

The roadmap, envisioning the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005, win only a qualified approval by Israel with 15 reservations, while the Palestinian gave unconditional agreement to it.

In an interview published by Lebanon’s Al-Safir daily on Thursday, Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz Rantissi said the truce “would not hold for long, as Sharon would surely violate it”.

‘Repeated’

Abdel-Sattar Qassem, a professor of political science in Nablus University deemed Israel's alleged pullout from Bethlehem as “not new”.

Qassem said a similar move was taken one year and a half ago, but “it ended with failure as Israel only wanted Palestinians to be guards of its territories.”

He predicted that all such agreements “would be easily doomed.”

“The local inhabitants feel the pullout is a temporary step, as Israeli blocks still besiege them after it,” said political analyst Ashraf Agrami, a political analyst.

Agrami however admitted the withdrawal could be “a great achievement” for Palestinians, as “they now find themselves in a critical juncture after the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the weakness of Arab and Islamic regimes “now struggling for their survival”.