Two years ago this week, on August 17, 2005, the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police began forcibly removing, from their homes, close to 9,000 Jewish residents of Gush Katif in Gaza and northern Shomron - Ariel Sharon's Disengagement plan. Long-time resident Galit Yitzchaki of the Gush Katif town of Ganei Tal was able, amidst the tensions, disappointment, anger, tears and fears, to put in writing her experiences and impressions in a diary - the fourth installment of which is presented here.
Click to read the previous excerpts of this series:
Part OnePart TwoPart Three
Wednesday, Aug. 17
The Day of Expulsion has arrived; who would have ever believed it?I wake up after a night of barely sleeping, take a quick shower to freshen up - today is going to be a hard one, after all - and of course put on my orange shirt which reads, "Please, my G-d, protect my Ganei Tal."
The girls are up already, they have made us some kind of great breakfast; even though the kitchen is totally dismantled, thank G-d there's no lack of food. I mean, we just bought lots of food only two days ago to last for a few days; who would have believed it would go so fast... Little by little, the men return from prayers and sit down to eat something. I can't even look at food now; just the thought of it makes me nauseous.
The workers are outside packing up what is left, and I bring them food and drink. It hurts me to see how they are being used; at one point, one of them who looks like a dropout-type says this whole thing is really hard for him and he doesn't understand how the country can do this to us... Should I tell him that I also don't understand? I walk around helpless, not knowing what to do with myself, climbing the walls, stuck to the camera and documenting every moment.
Around 9 AM, I hear loud noises from outside. I run outside and I see a horrific sight. On our main street, our street, a giant group of policemen and soldiers are marching, you can even hear their strides, they're so precise and organized, dressed perfectly, with sunglasses and hats, and with little Israeli flags all over. These flags are the only thing differentiating them from other armies in history...
It is just terrible. They stop next to the house of the late Yehudit Maor, her young nieces are standing next to them crying bitterly, and with heart-breaking pleas to the soldiers not to do it. Their brother Ruby is getting it all on camera. The soldiers, with a distant coldness, continue to march as if nothing was going on.
The girls tell them that this is their aunt's house who just died this past Purim, five months ago: "This is all we have left of her; how can you do this?!" I quickly come up to them and start crying together with them, everyone is hugging and crying. Little by little, everyone starts to hear the cries and they come out and join us and yell at the soldiers and cry a lot. The Zeira family takes an officer and tries to convince him not to do it. Some girl soldiers can't take it and just start crying bitterly; the officer - a Druze with cold green eyes - without batting an eyelash immediately gathers them together under a tree and orders them to drink water and calm down.
They advance towards our house. Uriyah comes and he also starts to cry; how do you explain to a 13-year-old boy why he has to be thrown out of his house? Meanwhile, everyone comes out of the house, everyone wiping away tears. Ima [Mom] comes out, she is totally hoarse from the last few days, trying to talk to the soldiers, telling them that they're so sweet and how are they able to do such a thing like throwing people out of their homes? She reminds them that it will pursue them their whole lives. Someone tells a young Ethiopian female soldier that she knows how hard it was for her and her family to come to Israel, so how can she now throw people from their homes? Then Abba [Dad] comes out, totally trembling and broken, and he yells out, "We come from a Holocaust survivor family, how can you do this to us!?"
But the soldiers continue marching up the street. Two more neighboring families join us, everyone is crying, begging the soldiers to refuse the orders: "How will you be able to live knowing you banished Jews? What will you tell your children? How will you be able to face yourselves in the mirror?" But nothing helps, they are programmed to carry out the mission, they have been brainwashed. I'm pretty hysterical by now, screaming at them that we will publicize all their names and that they will go down in infamy.
But not one righteous person can be found in this Sodom. They go from house to house in masses, they cover the whole town, and they inform the people in each house that they have until 1 PM, and that whoever doesn't leave on his own by then will be forcibly taken out.
I get back to the door of my home, totally exhausted and broken. I lie down on the floor and start crying hysterically, I just can't stop. But I'm able to ask Shiz to go get Abba, because I'm really afraid for him...
Things calm down a bit when the soldiers leave, and we actually finish packing the last things and send our giant container on its way. Many things remain on our lawn because there was no room.
We have three hours left. We sit on the grass, trying to calm down; everyone is so tense, the house is already nearly totally empty, just a few things are left. Then we abruptly and unanimously decide to destroy the house; we will not allow any terrorists to get to step onto even one tile of our holy house.
Abba takes a big hammer and Yoav takes a big metal piece and they start smashing everything. They break windows, mirrors, toilets, shower stalls, doors, electric outlets, whatever cabinets were left, and even the marble counter in the kitchen. They take everything apart and just smash away. We pass the hammers from hand to hand, trying to take out all our tensions and frustration and anger on the house itself. Everyone feels the need to just unleash everything that was bottled up. They take the wooden fence on the upstairs porch and break it and throw it on the grass, and even the staircase leading upstairs they cut and break. They go upstairs and break the solar panels and the roof tiles, and leave the house almost totally destroyed.
We take out our anger even on the food that's left. Anat writes on the wall, in ketchup, "Jewish blood is not wanton." We wipe things on the floor... It's unbelievable that just yesterday we had a palace here - and now it's just a garbage dump. My heart breaks as I take pictures of everything.
There's a little time left, and I go outside with Yiftach and Efrat to pick fruits off our trees; Abba says it's forbidden [by Jewish Law] to uproot the trees, but we want to make sure that they won't be able to benefit from our fruits. Our beautiful trees - lemon, mango, pomegranate, loquat, apricot, pomela - they're all going to rot... And the beautiful garden that Abba and Ima worked so hard is already dried out; even the plants feel the catastrophe.
We go next door to the Zeira family; their container is here and they haven't yet begun to pack. The soldiers are helping them, but it's too hard to watch it happen.
1 PM is nearing, Alon is sitting upstairs to be our lookout to see when the soldiers are coming. We gather outside for a last group picture of the whole family outside our front door. And then we go inside and wait tensely for the soldiers to come.
Finally they come, and Abba asks them to look at what we wrote on the walls, while we are hugging and singing, at Abba's request, "Ani Maamin" [I Believe with Perfect Faith in the Coming of the Messiah] with the same tune as those who walked to their deaths in the gas chambers. The crying is simply heart-breaking and everyone is near collapse...
We try to pull ourselves together, parting from the only house we have ever known. Itiel is totally broken; he's also a soldier and he sees his comrades-in-arms throwing him out of his home. He refuses to leave, he wants them to drag him out; I tell him that he can't let any soldier touch him, that he's holy compared to them.
We leave the house, and the soldiers take a last look around, checking to see that, Heaven forbid, no one remains inside. We pile all the suitcases we'll need for the coming days onto Shiz's jeep, and then we go towards the synagogue for our last gathering and for an organized departure. On the way I see a lot of people near Rabbi Kadosh's house, many many soldiers and reporters; we come closer and we see the rabbi in his house with his whole family reciting Psalms, shrieking and crying, refusing to leave.
Little by little, the whole yishuv [community] is there, standing at the rabbis' house, everyone is broken. Abba also comes, he starts crying and yelling; I'm so scared for him, and I ask one of his friends to take him away from there... Everyone is broken and near collapse, the heart-rending crying continues the whole time, people are reciting Pslams, trying to talk to the soldiers - maybe this one last time we'll succeed, but no, they're as cold as ice, they hear nothing.
Some of the female soldiers take the rabbi's daughters out, they're crying, then the rabbi comes out with the rest of the family, and we walk with them, singing and crying, towards the synagogue, everyone is embracing and supporting each other.
Everyone gathers at the synagogue, including those who were with us for the last few weeks, and we pray our last Mincha [afternoon] service. It is the most chilling prayer service I have ever heard; there's no one there who's not crying and screaming out Avinu Malkeinu [Our Father, Our King].
After the prayer, our neighbor Shoshi Slutzky, well known for her writing ability, reads aloud a poem she has written for the end of Ganei Tal; it is accompanied by sobs and wailing from every direction. Then Rabbi Kadosh gives a last speech, encouraging and strengthening us, and the tears keep coming. At the end we sing again Ani Maamin and Ana B'koach; everyone hugs the Holy Ark and refuses to leave. Children, men, women, everyone is crying and hugging, everyone is asking Why? Why? How can they do this to us? But there is no answer...
One by one, everyone gathers his stuff and, just like refugees, we walk towards the buses that will take us out of the Gush. Some people have their cars here, and we drive in a slow convoy, headed by Dovaleh's car that has orange flags and a large sign reading, "We are the refugees from Ganei Tal."
I'm in a car with Shiz and a few others, in a long convoy of cars like a funeral procession, driving north. We pass, for the last time, the Kissufim Checkpoint; we won't be humiliated there any more... All along the way, we see signs along the way reading, "We're with you," "We love you," "You are heroes," and more. At every intersection there were crowds of people supporting and encouraging us...
Two years later:
The residents of Ganei Tal are still living in temporary pre-fabs in Yad Binyamin, with no idea when work on their permanent homes in nearby Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim will begin.