Veteran (perennial) Labor party politician Shimon Peres told the crowd they represent the majority, and asked the government to go ahead with disengagement from Gaza. However, Peres said disengagement should include abandoning the infamous Philadelphi patrol road, which separates Gaza from Egypt. Sharon and the Israeli defense establishment want to keep the road in order to prevent smuggling of arms from Egypt. This week 11 IDF soldiers were killed in operations along that road, and two more were killed trying to retrieve the bodies of dead soldiers.

The disengagement plan would require uprooting Israeli Gaza settlements and sealing off Gaza. The settlements require extensive subsidies to maintain and an inordinate number of soldiers to guard them. They are a visible and maddening symbol of the occupation to Palestinians, an easy target for infiltrators and a constant source of friction.

The demonstration of the long moribund peace movement succeeded because at last they have found an issue on which most Israelis agree - getting out of Gaza.The issue is beset with paradox. The disengagement proposal was advanced by Likud PM Ariel Sharon, but defeated in a poll of his own Likud party, because a majority of members are loathe to give up settlements. This gave the left the opportunity they needed, since disengagement is supported by a decisive majority of Israelis. So this was, in a way, a "support the PM" demonstration, rather than a protest demonstration against the government.

The Israeli mass peace movement really got its start in the 1980s, when a massive demonstration in the same square was organized to protest the massacre in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon, and to demand the resignation of then defense minister Ariel Sharon. During the years of the Intifada, the peace movement was marginalized. Now the peace movement has finally returned, but with Shimon Peres and Peace Now demonstrating in support of a plan proposed by Ariel Sharon. Strange things are happening.

What fuels the popularity of the disengagement plan? Most Israelis understood from the start that the Gaza settlements were just bargaining chips for a future peace agreement. Gaza, which holds over a million Palestinians in its tiny 143 square mile area, was always a hellish experience for soldiers. People usually returned from reserve duty muttering "Eyn lanu ma lehapess sham" - "There is no reason for us to be there." As it became increasingly evident that the peace agreement is not coming any time soon, and the settlement bargaining chips became increasingly burdensome on the IDF, Israelis, even hawkish PM Ariel Sharon, understood that it was time to get out. Most Israelis have also become tired of the total lack of progress in negotiations. Sound bites and photo-ops and peace plans come and go, but the killing and brutality and routine dehumanization continue unabated. Announcements and stories about removing illegal outposts come and go, along with promises to the Americans, but not a single inhabited outpost has been removed. Many agreed with Yahad party's Yossi Sarid that Sharon's disengagement plan might be a bluff, and that he never intended for it to succeed, submitting it to the Likud for a vote with lackluster support in order to kill the plan, after getting a letter from US President Bush backing Israeli stands on right of return for Palestinian refugees and on retaining at least some settlements in the West Bank. But the people at the demonstration came there to force Sharon to follow the plan for once. Disengagement represents an opportunity to break the stalemate.

Not all the demonstrators favored unilateral disengagement. A large contingent carried signs calling for a negotiated settlement and support for the Geneva Accord hammered out by dovish Yahad party leader Yossi Beilin and Israeli and Palestinian representatives. However, the demonstration was impressive proof that the peace movement is not dead in Israel, and that in the right circumstances, it could be a potent political force. The organizers vowed that this demonstration is only the start of a campaign to get Israel out of Gaza.

Ami Isseroff