Four years ago, the residents of Nitzan Bet were living in Gush Katif. One day in 2005, a mass of soldiers descended upon their communities and uprooted them. The reaction, for many of them, was to dissociate themselves from the IDF, with which they had previously enjoyed warm ties. Some vowed they would never take a hitchhiker in uniform in their car again.
Time may have mellowed some of the pain, as IDF journal Bamachaneh reports that Nitzan Bet has now welcomed 12 soldiers from the Nachal Corps into its midst. The Nachal – an acronym for Pioneering, Fighting Youth – sends units that are called gareenim (seed groups) to create outposts and carry out tasks of a social and educational nature.
The seed group of 12 soldiers carries out activities in Nitzan Bet and five other communities in the area: Nitzanim, Gevaram, Mavkiim, Berachya and Keremya. “We do a lot of values-oriented activity in the youth clubs and local schools on the subject of democracy and social involvement, and we try to bring the youth closer to the IDF,” Cpl. Maya Gal, a member of the seed group, said. “The residents here cooperate nicely, take care of us and help us. True, there is still the concept of the IDF as an evacuating force, but they are able to make a distinction between today’s soldiers and those of the past.”
'The authorities are very interested"
“This is an idea that has been rolling around since the Disengagement, and six months ago we decided together with the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council to create a Nachal seed group in the area, which will concentrate its activities in Nitzan,” said Lt.-Col. Eti Mechani.
“We are only at the beginning of the road,” she said. “The soldiers were accepted in the community without a hitch, in a good way, and we see a lot of importance in this.”
“The authorities are very interested in having the seed group members stay on as residents of the communities even after their release from the IDF,” the Head of the Nachal unit in the Ministry of Defense, Yitzchak Engelovich, told Bamachaneh. “So even if the economic situation is not good, they make an effort to find a budget for the initiative. The idea is that the seed group members will not come from the outside and then leave, but will rather live in the community with the residents and help treat various matters, such as in this case, the identity crisis of youth in Nitzan following the Disengagement.”
The Head of Mission Section in the Nachal, Eitan Uri, said that “the idea behind the ‘mission chapter’ [of the Nachal military service] is that seed group members will reach the places in Israel that are facing the greatest difficulty, with the intention that they will keep on working and living there as civilians.”
“When we treat places as ‘difficult’, we are not just talking about a problematic financial situation or a concentration of immigrant populations, but also of social crises.”
Bnei Akiva, the national-religious youth movement, is going back to cooperation with the Nachal and will establish its first seed group in 15 years. The movement, which has about 7,500 youth members nationwide, will send 25 boys to settle in the Halutza Sands area and serve in the Nachal’s 50th Battalion. “Since the seed groups do not create new outposts at present, they will mostly carry out educational activities,” said Engelovich.