Five Years Later: Gaza’s Former Jewish Settlers

Five years later, the impact of resettlement in Israel

April 30, 2010

By Kenneth Lasson
Special to the Jewish Times

Link to original article

Yad Binyamin, Israel — once widely admired for their spirited, pioneering grit and faith-filled idealism, later vilified by some as selfish obstacles to peace, the people of Gush Katif are now virtually forgotten, buried beneath bureaucratic incompetence and the ever-shifting sands of world attention.

It’s been nearly five years since they were removed from the handsome seaside villages they’d made for themselves along the Gaza coastline. The withdrawal — some still call it an expulsion, some an evacuation — was part of the Israeli government’s unilateral disengagement from high-density Arab population centers (including a few in northern Samaria), after a decade and a half of failure to negotiate a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority.

The process was carried out in the late summer of 2005 with meticulous military precision, watched live by a worldwide television audience, much of which was transfixed with the painful poignancy of young soldiers forced to remove their own countrymen from the homes they’d been strongly encouraged to inhabit by earlier governments. A controversial move both in foresight and hindsight, it was intended to pave the way for a two-state solution, but brought instead years of rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel and culminated in Operation Cast Lead (December 2008-January 2009).

From the moment of their removal, the Gush Katif emigreés have been lost in an endless shuffle of ll-conceived plans for relocation and re-employment. In short, they’ve been left largely to fend for themselves.

Anita Tucker
Anita Tucker sits in her small temporary home in Ein Tzurim.

Widely known as “the Grandmother of Gush Katif,” she had come to Israel with her husband Stuart in 1969. She was from Brooklyn, he from Cleveland.

“We were a young couple who wanted to live in the homeland of the Jewish people. God said it was, the United Nations said it was.”

For seven years they lived in Beersheva, then decided to look into the government’s incentives to settle in Gaza. “So we came to look, with three little children. And all we saw was sand and more sand, no birds, nothing. I said to my husband, ‘Are we crazy? Let’s get out of here.’ And then the kids started sliding down those virgin sand dunes and it was tremendous fun, and they saw the sea, and they didn’t want to leave.

“Suddenly we saw two Arabs moving towards us. It turned out they were mukhtars, the religious leaders of some sleepy little towns nearby, coming with bread and salt in their hands — the traditional Moslem welcome. One of them had studied at Oxford and when he heard my Anglo accent he said, ‘Don’t you know that you can’t grow anything here? This is a cursed land.’ And I said, ‘How come you know about this and the government doesn’t? They sent us here to grow vegetables.’ And he said, ‘I know about it because in our tradition the last people who lived here who grew anything were Abraham and Isaac.’ So I found out about my Jewish roots from the mukhtars. It’s even mentioned in the Talmud that there were Jews living there.”

The American-born urbanites managed to make the land Mark Twain once called “a silent mournful expanse … a desolation … a worthless soil” into a flourishing agro-business — growing flowers and organic vegetables of all kinds in state-of-the-art greenhouses, much of their produce being exported to Europe and the U.S.

At first there were supposed to be only three towns, mostly dati (Orthodox) in the Sinai. The security plan was that there would be a Jewish presence from Sinai up to Ashkelon along the sea. “We had full government support. I knew [former Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon. He used to come visit us all the time, to encourage us to continue building.”

The Tuckers lived in a village named Netzer Hazani. Three of their children were born there. All five married and became farmers. They felt a spiritual kinship with the soil. They were doing Israel’s work, and God’s.

“We had a shul right away in one of the houses, and about six years later we built the most beautiful synagogue you could imagine.”

Three decades later, with Sharon still prime minister, the soldiers came.

I am being driven around by Judy Lowy, a friendly, articulate British native who is the executive director of JobKatif, a private organization that helps former residents of Gush Katif and Northern Samaria return to financial self-sufficiency.  An expert in the field of employment management, she made aliya with her husband some 32 years ago.

She was recruited by JobKatif’s founder, Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon, a teacher and Talmudic scholar, who realized that he needed professional help to guide his small group of volunteers. “He was the first person to understand,” says Ms. Lowy, “that when people have been displaced or traumatized, the thing they need most is to get back on their feet, to rebuild their lives. These people had been hard-working and industrious in Gush Katif, and now they were sitting around doing nothing.”

Ms. Tucker talks wistfully, her voice strong but her memories stronger, of the day she and her family were removed from Gush Katif. The last moments in Netzer Hazani were the most difficult. She had thought that Israelis would be more supportive, that everyone would join the bandwagon of opposition to the government’s decision unilaterally to withdraw from Gaza, but that was not to be.

The Israeli Defense Forces used a task force of 50,000 soldiers to carry out the evacuation. Fifteen military people came into the Tucker house, all wearing Air Force uniforms, handsomely adorned with the insignia of Israel — the blue-and-white flag, the candelabra of the Holy Temple, the symbol of the Knesset (“so that they’d be able to convince us,” says Ms. Tucker, “to identify with the nation, to leave quickly and easily”). They were mostly young, well-trained, polite and patient. They sat at her dining room table listening to her pleas that they not forcibly remove her family from their home. She poured her heart out to them for several hours that morning, she remembers.

“It was as though there were a glass wall between us. The only one of them who spoke was their commander, who glanced at his watch and said, ‘Mrs. Tucker, at 12 sharp, you will have to leave your house.’

“I had packed nothing, because I felt I had to give God a little more time to change His mind.”

She told them why her family had made aliya, how she hadn’t wanted to be a refugee as her parents and grandparents had been. She told them about how they had proudly turned the cursed sand into a bountiful land, about how much she wanted her children and grandchildren to continue believing in the State of Israel, the beginning of the redemption and flourishing of the Jewish people. She told the soldiers how much she wanted their children to continue believing in the State of Israel.

Still no response.

“I don’t cry very easily, but after that I don’t know what happened to me,” she said. “I began screaming like a real nut. ‘My dear State of Israel, give me a little hint, a little crumb, a little something!’ After two hours the head psychiatrist of IDF was brought in. I can’t understand what happened next, but my oldest daughter grabbed a soldier and pushed him into our bedroom with my husband and me, and yelled at him: ‘For 29 years my parents have slept on these beds — right now you have to give my mother something from your heart to take out with her.’ And she ran out of the room and slammed the door shut. I looked the soldier in the eyes, and he burst into tears and ran out. Two minutes later my daughter pushed in another one, and the same thing happened. Fourteen soldiers were pushed into the room, one after the other, and every one burst into tears and ran out.”

It was at that moment, Ms. Tucker says, that she “knew we still had a State of Israel, that perhaps we had a lot of work to do, to find a way of communicating better. But there was a little flame lit in these soldiers.”

Many from Gush Katif were taken by bus to hotels in Jerusalem. Beyond that,  the government had anticipated few of their basic needs, like buying food or doing laundry. Shortly thereafter, Rabbi Rimon got a phone call from some rabbis to check on them. He found some families with eight or nine children packed in the same room. He went back to his home in Alon Shvut South and mobilized as many of his followers as he could to help out — to wash and press laundry, bake cakes, buy food.

It soon became apparent that the greatest problem was employment. Though the rabbi knew little about job training, his mantra was Talmudic: “Our Sages teach that if one recognizes there is a need to do something, and nobody is doing it, it is incumbent upon him to do it himself.”

Four years later it had become painfully clear that, as successful as the government may have been in achieving a bloodless evacuation, its long-range post-withdrawal plans were as woefully inadequate as its short-range strategy. In many cases the compensation paid to the settlers for their lost homes was largely eaten up by the needs of everyday subsistence. Eighty-five percent of the residents of Gush Katif had been self-employed.

Now their current unemployment rate is nearly triple the national average. Factor in those who are not earning enough to support their families and that rate doubles to six times the national total. Many who have found some work are approaching middle age, and few have the financial means to restart their former businesses or begin building new homes. Divorce and depression are markedly higher than before.

In May of 2009 the government appointed a State Commission of Inquiry into the Handling of the Authorized Authorities of the Evacuees, headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Eliahu Matza. Last September the Commission issued a scathing 72-page interim report. Most of the blame was placed on the government’s own bureaucratic lethargy.

Singled our for praise, however, was the private JobKatif — whose volunteer initiatives have facilitated more than 1,200 job placements, established over 150 new businesses from the Negev to the Golan (contributing almost $20 million to the Israeli economy), provided professional retraining courses, and disbursed grants and interest-free loans.

After the Commission report was issued praising its work, JobKatif was able to negotiate an agreement with the Prime Minister’s Office for a $4.5 million grant — if it could raise that in matching funds.

“We came out of the report smelling like roses,” says Ms. Lowy, “[But] to raise money now is especially difficult. On the one hand, we’re very proud to get this recognition, but on the other hand it’s a tremendous challenge for us. ”

One person JobKatif has helped is Yehuda Gross. Born in Jaffa, he lived for a while in Yamit in the Sinai. When that town was transferred to Egypt in 1982, he moved to Gush Katif where he opened up a small framing shop. Immediately following the disengagement he and his wife and five children were transported to a hotel in Jerusalem.

After about 10 days there, they felt totally lost. “We had no idea what we were doing, or where we were supposed to be going. We thought we might have to buy a tent and find a park and live there.” The family stayed in the hotel for five months. Finally, with the help of JobKatif, he gained temporary residence in Nitzan, where the government said it was going to build a commercial center.

A sign announcing the center was put up. That was almost five years ago. Still, JobKatif supplied Mr. Gross with some startup money to re-establish his framing business, trained him to be a locksmith, and gave him counseling which he considers to be just as important as the funding. His store is similar to the one he owned in Gush Katif.

As Judy Lowy drives around the temporary villages of caravellas, a few of the more compelling human-interest images come to the fore. Makeshift bomb-shelters provided by the government — huge segments of sewer pipes set up outside the temporary homes like bus stops — are the “safe rooms” required by law for all Israeli homes. I am introduced to Michael Edri, a 20-ish Gush Katif evacuee who waxes enthusiastic about his new business — exporting dried fruits in attractive packages — and wonders how he is actually going to make a living when they are being sold at $7 each.

Ms. Lowy shows me the subsidized vouchers that JobKatif distributes twice a year and which can be redeemed only at stores owned by Gush Katif people. “If we had the money,” she says, “we’d do this throughout the year. But we don’t have the money. One of the biggest challenges we’re facing, is that if you mention Gush Katif to people in the Diaspora, they’ll say that’s old news — the government gave them compensation and they’re fine. But that’s not true. They’re still in temporary homes, and many of them are struggling financially with their children. They’re not fine.”

The JobKatif Call Center is housed in a former Arab mansion which sits on a bluff outside of Nitzan, near one of the embryonic new settlements to be built for the Gush Katif refugees.

The Call Center is a modest telemarketing operation managed by the Indian- born Pnina Aizen. Her husband, Jay, is from Philadelphia.  They made aliya in 1988 and were early pioneers in Gush Katif. The Disengagement took them and their six children from a comfortable home by the sea to a tiny caravella in Nitzan. In the interim they’ve been moved many times. Jay is unemployed. They are living from hand to mouth, waiting, with a mixture of futility bordering on despair, for the government to settle them permanently.

She feels forgotten, betrayed, by the government. “They tried to put everything under the rug. They are more concerned with who is sitting in what chair than the hell of a life we have here. ..  I would like just to settle down. It doesn’t matter where it is. We’re getting older and realize that not everything’s going to be our way. We try very hard just to maintain a regular life. It would be a dream to go back to Gush Katif. We had very good relations with our Arab neighbors.

What does she think of U.S. -Israeli ties?

“I think in some ways America has abandoned Israel. I think Jews have abandoned Jews, both Americans and Israelis. They must hate themselves or something — because why would they think this is good for us? They think that whatever happened to them, we are not part of the country.”

Adina Elkayam is also a former kindergarten teacher, another Gush Katif refugee who no longer has the spiritual strength or desire to continue in that job. She has eight children, ranging in age from 16 to 33. She lived in Gush Katif for 30 years.

Sitting on the sunny veranda of the mansion in Nitzan, Adina talks about how one of her sons, in the Israeli Navy at the time of the evacuation, was so traumatized that he ran away from his unit. He was caught and put in jail. When he released, he left the country; he’s still living abroad.

I asked the women if they still have faith in Israel after what the country has done with them.

“Yes, we still have faith in the idea of Eretz Yisrael,” says Pnina. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. We had the choice to go back to the States, and we chose not to. I even have a son named after Ariel Sharon, which is funny, because he was in our home in Elei Sinai; we met him, we knew him, and he betrayed us. In a way, we forgave him because you can’t erase everything he’s done over the years.”

Squinting into the sun, Adina is a bit more hesitant. “I still have faith that God knows what he is doing, that he understands.”

Judy Lowy pulls up to Merkaz Katif, a small shopping center in Yad Binyamin which JobKatif helped establish to help put some of the former Gush Katif business owners back on their feet. Among the dozen or so enterprises here are a small grocery, a pizzeria, a toy store, a clothing outlet and a Judaica. shop. The toy store is run by Tal Nashari, who for years was a teacher in the village of Gan-Or. Her husband was a metal worker on the family-owned farm. A Judaica gift store which doubles as a pottery workshop is owned and operated by Bracha Assis, a master ceramicist.

For 11 months the Tuckers — Anita, Stuart, their three children and 19 grandchildren — wandered like nomads around Israel, placed in various hotel rooms, youth hostels and makeshift group homes. Eventually, the government decided to put up a temporary caravan village in a former artichoke field in Ein Tzurim, and that’s where they are living.

“This site is supposed to be torn down in another year. Many people have fixed up their places beautifully — as if it’s their home forever — because just as we wish to fix our personal souls, our family souls were dying for a beautiful covering. These caravellas were built with cheap materials and everything is very flimsy. We often have sewage flowing in the streets, water pipes bursting,” Mrs.Tucker says.

“We don’t know where we are going to go after this, because the government has required us to raise the money to buy the land,” she adds. “Our children are sort of like marionette puppets. They have no past, no future. Everyone has to have a base.”

There are still a lot of mixed sentiments, both in Israel and beyond, about the pioneers from Gush Katif. To be sure they have been subjected to a classic kind of Israeli incompetence: the inability to get anything done that is not perceived as an urgent national priority.  And the government has callously ignored or exacerbated the understandable social and economic traumas caused by disengagement.

On the other hand, many refused to accept the government’s financial packages in the year prior to the disengagement, their resistance egged on by leaders who felt betrayed by the country. In addition, their periodic talk of returning to Gush Katif has been met with little sympathy by most Israelis.

Meanwhile, tensions are percolating about what’s going on with a growing number of young soldiers. There’s been widespread speculation that many of them would refuse to remove setters from today’s Judea and Samaria if ordered to do so.

It is one of the tragic ironies of Gaza that Gush Katif has once again become a wasteland. The IDF had systematically torn down the homes built by the settlers — a policy designed at least in part to ameliorate the negative psychological impact of rewarding Palestinians for their intransigence.

After the withdrawal, the Palestinian leadership ordered the destruction of every vestige of things Jewish, including the hothouses and communal buildings and businesses and once-verdant fields that could have been used to their people’s economic advantage. They have taken back the place the hated Israelis had made fertile, the barren sands upon which settlers had carved idyllic villages.

Regardless of their feelings about Gush Katif, most Israelis know that the Arabs would rather focus world sympathy on Gaza as a cesspool in which their brethren have been forced to wallow. The billions of foreign dollars that could have created a Mediterranean homeland have been squandered.

The extent to which they’ve won that sympathy can be explained only by a believer in Divine providence — or a diabolical combination of domestic and foreign political machinations that, with the clear hindsight of the past five years, have been spectacularly unproductive.

Anita Tucker finishes with a story about when she left Gush Katif for the last time.

“It was the turn of the 15th soldier, the commanding officer, who was pushed into the room. I looked the man in the eyes. He said, ‘Mrs. Tucker, at 12 o’clock you’ll have to leave your home.’ At this point it was I who left the room, slamming the door shut. I was leaving my home for the last time, after 29 years.”

Actually the first one of the family to leave was her son, who had put on his old army uniform as a sign of protest, and tore the cloth — a traditional symbol of Jewish mourning. At this sight her husband cried out in great pain, “God, I didn’t train my children for all these years for this moment to happen.” They started leaving the house — Anita, her husband, their children and grandchildren, walking down the front path of their home.

“And suddenly my husband remembered that he had forgotten his tallit and tfilin, and he asked permission to fetch them. And he went back in, and there he sees the highest air force officer there, leaning on our dining room table, crying out with great tears. I felt that truly God had given me a personal present, that we still have a State of Israel. There had been a flame lit in every one of those soldiers.”

Along with most of the 9,000 former residents of Gush Katif, the Tuckers mourn the five years that have passed “since our homes, our businesses, our lives, were turned into a pile of rubble. Nothing left, just a pile of rubble.”

Almost to a person, says Judy Lowy, the emigreés dream about returning to their settlements by the sea. Most have come to temper their ideology with reality. “These are damaged people. They may have been shabbily treated by the government and misunderstood by their countrymen, but they have kept their pride and their religious spirit. Israel is built on two things: aliya and settling the land.”

Since the Oslo Accords, she points out, Israel stopped building new settlements.

“The only answer to destruction is construction,” says Anita Tucker, “and we hope to build anew. We can’t begin to build without partnering with supporters in the United States. It’s not fun to be shnorrers [beggars], after so many years of self-sufficiency.”

Kenneth Lasson, a professor of law at the University of Baltimore, is a frequent contributor.

(Photo credits: Kenneth Lawson)