Wednesday marked six years since the destruction of Gush Katif, the expulsion of its 8,000 Jewish residents and the burning of the synagogues there, in the “disengagement” from Gaza by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government.
The Komemiyut movement held its annual event marking this day in the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem’s Old City. The event included public prayers and seminaries on the subject of “The Expulsion Then and the Conclusions Today.”
One of the participants in the conference, attended by leading rabbis and public figures, was MK Nissim Ze’ev (Shas) who told Arutz Sheva that the expulsion from Gush Katif should be remembered just as the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem is remembered.
“I witnessed the expulsion, I saw the suffering, the crying, the tears, the families who were taken out of their homes,” Ze’ev said, adding that all the promises made back then, that leaving Gush Katif would result in peace and quiet, have been proven wrong.
“Sharon’s government promised that the expulsion would change the situation in Israel and the Middle East and we got the exact opposite,” he said. “A terror state was formed in the Gaza Strip and it has become a terrorist entity. Iran is actually strengthened because it has Hamas in the south and Hizbullah in the north, both of which are branches of Iran and do its work.”
Ze’ev expressed hopes that the present government will know to draw conclusions from the Gush Katif expulsion.
“We need to see the grim reality that set in because of the expulsion,” he said. “We received terror because of it. Today the whole world is after us and so we have to defend ourselves and do everything without waiting for favors of others.”
Ze’ev also addressed the late night destruction of three homes in Migron earlier this week, and said he hopes that just as the government demolished homes in Migron, it will also know how to demolish illegal homes of Arabs in Jerusalem.
“No way can we be our own enemies and destroy Jewish houses first when the entire country is full of Arab illegal construction,” he said. “It happens in Jerusalem right under our noses. It’s complete lawlessness and nothing is done about it.”