The demonstration was pretty large in the end -- the police say 150,000 and the organizers say 250,000. There were a lot of huge posters saying "I swear." I don't know what they were swearing to, though. I took some pictures off the television coverage and I'll post one of them, but it isn't clear. You can get a sense of the color of the demonstration, though!

It's really down to the wire now. It's very hard to imagine what will happen. Sunday is Tisha B'Av, a day of mourning, so all the religious folks will be fasting, but the day after that all the settlers will get a notice that the evacuation has begun. They have two days to leave with the assistance of the army, who will help them load their stuff on trucks, etc. If they don't leave by the 17th, the army will forcibly evacuate them and they will have to leave everything behind. There will certainly be families who do that. In Netzarim no one is packing! The stores and institutions are operating as usual. Seems to me it will be very traumatic to do everything at the last minute!

There was an article in the paper this morning about a cat rescuing organization that is busy picking up cats from the settlements to rescue them. You should know that all over Israel there are feral cats who live on garbage. They are always very skinny and remind you more of rats than cats. The cat rescuers should be working in Jerusalem!

The other news is all about Netanyahu. There was detailed coverage of his telephone calls right after his resignation speech. He is determined to head the Likud. Sharon gave an interview on television and made scathing remarks about Bibi. Some think that Sharon will take the moderate Likud members and form a new party, leaving Bibi as head of the radical right members remaining. Israelis love to speculate about politics!

Shabbat shalom!