By Amos Harel  
The Israel Defense Forces is expected to hand over control of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority this week, and military sources said yesterday that control may be transferred as early as tomorrow.
Meanwhile, settlers yesterday vacated nine illegally-built homes inhabited last week in the Amuna outpost, near the settlement of Ofra, north of Ramallah.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas agreed on the transfer in a meeting a few weeks ago. Sharon told Abbas that control of Qalqilyah would be transferred a week after Bethlehem. The transfers were delayed due to a series of shooting attacks in the West Bank last month, in which three Israeli citizens were killed

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Do you know, dear brothers, that the expulsion has already begun? Do you know that the media refuse to broadcast pictures and information that could cause the cancellation of the expulsion? Do you know that policemen are beating Gush Katif Jews who are bound with handcuffs? Did you know that even girls have been and are being cruelly beaten by policemen? Did you know that policemen are equipped with metal knuckles and other cruel accessories in order to hit us?
Did you know that policemen are freely fabricating arrest reports in order to cover up for their acts, leaving innocent citizens to stand trial for crimes they did not commit? Did you know that all of this is backed up by the authorities, in full knowledge of the injustice that is being caused to innocent people?
In another five weeks, they will knock on our doors – but we know now very clearly that the “evacuation” will not be done gently. We will be beaten until we bleed, and then dragged cruelly from our homes.



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IRWIN BLOCK
The Gazette
There is the threat of Jew battling Jew next month if settlers resist removal as Israel begins pulling out from Gaza and four West Bank settlements.
For Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, the move is only the first step in its goal of one Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
But the uncertainties of the future do not intimidate two planeloads of Canadian and U.S. Jews who will be leaving home tomorrow to settle in the uncertainty of present-day Israel.
Among the 90 from Montreal who will be "making aliyah" - aliyah means, literally, "going up" - is Marni Urman, a recent McGill University graduate in medicine


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