Expelled residents of Gush Katif were finally able to access the contents of the synagogues - and almost cried at what they saw.
Nearly three years after their luxurious synagogues were destroyed and the contents thereof summarily packed in boxes and sent to storage, some residents of Gush Katif were finally able to gain access to the prayerbooks and other items - and their faces fell.
"When we arrived, we were horrified to see the Desecration of G-d's Name that was there," said Aviel Tucker of the former town of Netzer Hazani. "Sacred books were strewn about on the floor and in undignified piles, with bird droppings all over them. It was tremendously sad for us to see pieces of our beautiful synagogue - parts of the Holy Ark, benches, memorial plaques - strewn about with abandon, or worse."
"We felt that we were sharing the same fate," Aviel said. "Not only have we, the residents, been humiliated and expelled in disgrace, but also the sacred books and G-d's Name."
The story behind the synagogues' contents is a sad one, Tucker said. "We asked the Sela Disengagement Administration and representatives of the Department of Religious Affairs countless times over the past year to allow us to get to the storehouses - but it turned out that the problem was that Sela hadn't paid the owners of the storehouses, and so the owners didn't let us get in!"
Over 40 families of Netzer Hazani are currently living in the temporary pre-fab home site in Kibbutz Ein Tzurim, north of Ashkelon, waiting to move in to their new permanent homes in Yesodot, between Yad Binyamin and Latrun. However, work on the infrastructure has not even begun, nor has a final agreement on the new town even been signed.
"Each family has been asked to pay $1,500 per dunam (quarter-acre)," Tucker told Arutz-7, "so that we can get the land that we were promised. Many families don’t have this kind of money, of course, so we are trying to raise the money on a community level - about $2 million worth."
Asked if it wouldn't have been easier for each family to just take the original compensation money offered by the government and go off on his own, Tucker answered, "The one thing we cannot do - and most of those who were expelled from Gush Katif agree - is to allow them to destroy our communities. They took our houses, and our synagogues, and our dignity - but they cannot take away our ideals, nor our sense of community. People have no jobs or homes, and no certain future, but the one thing they do have is their friends and neighbors who are all sticking together."
His mother Anita, one of the earliest Gush Katif pioneers - she and her husband Stuart settled in the sands that later became Netzer Hazani in 1973 - agrees. "The youngsters who are now getting married refuse to leave. Though there is no room for more caravan-houses on our site, they are renting small houses in Ein Tzurim, or nearby, just so they can be close to their parents and their community. Though the government would love it to happen, no one is willing to let the communities of Gush Katif disappear."
For more information on the plight and plans of the expelled Jews of Gush Katif, see http://www.katifund.org/English/.
A ceremony in honor of a new Israeli stamp in honor of Gush Katif will be held in Nitzan, the largest concentration of former Gush Katif families, on Wednesday afternoon.