Settlers want to return

An Israeli settler leader proposed returning to the Gaza Strip in order to stop Palestinian rocket salvos.Avi Farhan, who in 2005 was removed from his home in the northern Gaza settlement of Elei Sinai as part of the evacuation of some 8,000 Israelis from Gaza, said Tuesday that restoring the enclaves would combat cross-border shelling by Palestinian terrorists. “It is a fact that today, they are firing at Ashkelon, Sderot and the western Negev from my home in Elei Sinai,” Farhan, who in 1982 had been evicted from the Yamit settlement when the Sinai was returned to Egypt, told Israel’s Army Radio. “The solution is to bring us back. We will solve two problems, both the security problem and the problem of rehabilitating us, as today, two years later, we still don’t have permanent homes. We move from rented house to rented house.” In the West Bank, thousands of right-wing Israelis marched on the ruins of Homesh, one of four settlements in the territory that were evacuated in parallel with the Gaza withdrawal. It was the fourth such rally in Homesh, which settler activists have vowed to rebuild despite government objections.