Gush Katif
Gush KatifGush Katif

More than 18 years ago, as a resident of the town of Neve Dekalim, Rabbi Kobi Bornstein, currently the content manager for the Gush Katif Heritage Center in Nitzan, was one of the leaders of the struggle against the disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

The IDF ground operation in the Gaza Strip has brought troops, for the first time since then, to the town where he lived. In a photograph that he received, Bornstein saw, for the first time since the disengagement, the plot of land where his home was.

"The heart beats. We knew that the Palestinians didn't build on the majority of the land of Gush Katif. But these pictures, which came from Israeli soldiers who again walk on the town's land, showed us, for the first time since the disengagement, the plot where we lived, still abandoned. No matter what you think about the day after, for us this is extraordinary excitement," Bornstein wrote.

According to him, "You can't ignore the fact that the circumstances that brought us here are tragic and terrible and I wish they wouldn't have happened, but with all the sorrow and pain and longing for better and quieter days, you can't not feel the heart pound. The hidden ways through which G-d runs the world are surely unfathomable. Who would believe that just a few days before Gush Katif Day in the education system, we would talk about Gush Katif not only in past tense."