Yitzchak Shlissel and Ayelet Biber, who met while working to save Gush Katif and Amona, will be married next week - in Amona.
Yeshanews reports that Yitzchak, 28, and Ayelet, 21, knew each other casually while working in the Ta Katom (Orange Cell) Students Group on behalf of Gush Katif. However, following the Gush Katif expulsion in the summer of 2005, their ties got stronger as the government's plans to destroy nine Jewish homes in Amona became more immediate. They worked together in Amona during the destruction, and their second meeting there will happen next week - under a wedding canopy.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in one of his first moves after taking over as Acting Prime Minister following Ariel Sharon's massive stroke early last year, sent in large police and army forces to destroy nine newly-built houses on the hilltop of Amona, east of Ofrah. The Supreme Court had ruled in accordance with a Peace Now claim that the land on which they were built belonged to Arabs - though the said owners never showed up to demand or claim their land. The Jewish residents maintained that the homes were constructed legally and in accordance with government promises that they would be approved.
In the event, on Feb. 1, 2006, the destruction of the nine Amona buildings was completed in approximately five hours. Stories and videos of brutal and unprovoked police violence - over 200 protestors were injured - began surfacing almost immediately, and continued for weeks thereafter.
The happy bridegroom Yitzchak, a resident of Shaarei Tikvah near Petach Tikvah, recounts: "Our relationship essentially began on the backdrop of Amona, on the Sabbath before the destruction [Jan. 2006]. Ayelet helped organized a Sabbath for the Ta Katom members from all over the country. On Saturday night, I suggested that we make a short movie to call upon the public to come to Amona to protest the destruction. After we finished, we went to Amona, arriving the night before the destruction [as did hundreds of others]."
During the violent destruction, Yitzchak became one of hundreds of protestors who were injured by policemen. He was atop one of the houses, filming a policeman breaking into the house next door (where dozens of protestors were 'sitting-in') by smashing its windows. "When he saw me, he sent another policeman to beat me and break my camera. I was rushed by ambulance to the hospital, and received five stitches in my head."
Ayelet, a former resident of Disengagement-destroyed Netzarim in Gaza and now living in Ariel, says that she was in another house at the time, waiting to hear what Yitzchak had caught on film - they had apparently not agreed on the correct approach - and what was going on outside.
"After a while," she recalls, "Yitzchak phoned me and said, 'Listen, my head was cracked open and I'm on the way to the hospital.' I was in shock, and couldn't believe that things had gotten that far. Then he added, 'Oh, by the way, our argument about the camera - it's not relevant anymore.' I went to visit him in the hospital the next day - and the rest is history."
Yitzchak was pleasantly surprised that Ayelet took the loss of her camera so well, "and not only that - she came to visit me the next day. So I began to think..."
The wedding will be held in the ruins-turned-temporary-wedding-hall of Amona, overlooking Ofrah in the Binyamin region. The canopy will stand outside the ruins of House #9, where Yitzchak was beaten, and the dancing and wedding feast will be in the area of the "Tent of the Wounded." The wedding will be conducted by Rabbi Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Arba-Hevron, and the couple will live in Ariel.
"For us, this is a closing of a circle," say Yitzchak and Ayelet. "Yes, there was an expulsion from Gush Katif and a destruction of Amona, but precisely from amidst this loss we are continuing to build new homes and new families."