Palestinian residents of a Gaza Strip enclave that has been branded a haven for collaborators asked the Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday to grant them refuge inside Israel after the Gaza evacuation this summer. Although the residents of the village of Dahaniya insist they are not collaborators — and Israeli officials agree — their lawyer says they will be killed by fellow Palestinians if they are forced to remain after the Israeli soldiers who now protect them withdraw from Gaza.
| They're not militant enough, y'see... |
Israeli officials say they plan to raze the village in the southern Gaza, compensate the residents and send most of them into the rest of Gaza to build new lives. "The Palestinians see them as collaborators, and if they fall into their hands, it's a death sentence," their attorney, Chaim Mandelbaum, said. The residents, many of them Bedouin, say Israel is responsible for their reputation. In the petition filed with Israel's top court on Sunday, they asked to be relocated as a community to the southern Negev desert in Israel, and to receive compensation similar to that being given to Israeli settlers who are to be evacuated from Gaza settlements during the withdrawal, Mandelbaum said. |