Yigal Kirshenzaft, a resident in 1981-2 of Hatzar Adar, a small outpost-community in the northwestern Sinai south of Yamit, remembered today the "expulsion" from Hatzar Adar. "I recall that then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon arrived in his helicopter, and personally supervised the expulsion himself," he told Arutz-7 today. He said that he cannot prophesize if history will repeat itself, but "I can tell you, as Rabbi Yaakov Ariel [then the head of Yamit hesder yeshiva] wrote at the time, that Yamit was not built on ideology... whereas N'vei Dekalim and Gush Katif of today are full of holiness, Torah institutions, and kindness organizations - and we know that everything is governed by Divine Providence."
During the last hours of Israel's presence in Yamit in 1982, an unofficial ceremony was held in Yamit by the last residents to leave, and the following was recorded for posterity on the radio system of the Movement to Stop the Withdrawal from the Sinai:
"Today, Sunday, the second of Iyar in the year 5742 to the Creation of the world, here on the ruins of the memorial to IDF soldiers in the holy city of Yamit, may it be rebuilt: We hereby swear, before G-d and before Israel, that we have not abandoned and will not abandon, have not forgotten and will not forget, [the towns of]: Yamit, and Sadot, and Diklah, and Pri'el, and Pri-Gan, and Talmei Yosef, and Netiv Ha'Asarah, and Ugdah, and Nir Avraham, and Neot Sinai, and Haruvit, and Atzmona, and Hatzar Adar. This area is part of Biblical Israel, and we will not 'abandon it to other nations or to desolation' [paraphrasing the Halakhic codes] until the Biblical promise of the return of the Jewish People is fulfilled."
Kirshenzaft said that he was not present at the time of that oath, because as the secretary of Hatzar Adar he was imprisoned in Ashkelon each of the seven times that the members of Hatzar Adar returned and were evacuated by the police. He said, however, that the vow is still in force:
"My children know that we will return. Just like we returned to the Old City and to other places that some people never thought we would return to, we will come back to those areas as well. True, the memories of these places are not as distinct as we would like - I noticed that in some of the religious-Zionist literature of the past week there was no mention of the sad anniversary, and I told the editors, and they said it would be corrected - but in any event we will never forget this area and the terrible catastrophe that befell us here 21 years ago."
Uri Elitzur, who headed the Movement to Stop the Withdrawal from the Sinai - he served later as the head of Binyamin Netanyahu's Prime Ministerial Bureau - was asked on Arutz-7 this morning if he had succeeded in arousing the public at the time. "At the beginning," he said, "we set off on a struggle that appeared totally hopeless and detached from reality. In the end, our efforts were a major topic of discussion in the media and in the Knesset. Thousands of people responded to our call to come to the area or try to stop the withdrawal in other ways - but the bottom line, of course, is that we did not succeed."
Asked what his conclusions are, Elitzur said,
"For one thing, our efforts flew in the face of common logic to a certain extent. The agreement had already been signed, Israel had obligated itself in front of the whole world in what the government thought was its most important agreement ever, and along came a bunch of young guys hoping to change everything... Why, then, did we do it? This may be the most important lesson, in my opinion. I call it the 'struggle of the sail.' When a person sits in a boat and the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, it's obvious that he can't fight against the wind. He thus has two choices: to give up, or to prepare a sail in the hope that G-d will have mercy and change the wind direction - in which case he'll be ready! At that time, G-d did not change the wind, but we built the sail - which is what believing Jews are supposed to do in this type of situation... Today, things are very different, in that the State of Israel has not signed any agreement, and even the Rabin-Peres government refused to make any commitment to dismantle even one Yesha community. This is most certainly due, partially, to our efforts in trying to stop the withdrawal from the Sinai..."
During the last hours of Israel's presence in Yamit in 1982, an unofficial ceremony was held in Yamit by the last residents to leave, and the following was recorded for posterity on the radio system of the Movement to Stop the Withdrawal from the Sinai:
"Today, Sunday, the second of Iyar in the year 5742 to the Creation of the world, here on the ruins of the memorial to IDF soldiers in the holy city of Yamit, may it be rebuilt: We hereby swear, before G-d and before Israel, that we have not abandoned and will not abandon, have not forgotten and will not forget, [the towns of]: Yamit, and Sadot, and Diklah, and Pri'el, and Pri-Gan, and Talmei Yosef, and Netiv Ha'Asarah, and Ugdah, and Nir Avraham, and Neot Sinai, and Haruvit, and Atzmona, and Hatzar Adar. This area is part of Biblical Israel, and we will not 'abandon it to other nations or to desolation' [paraphrasing the Halakhic codes] until the Biblical promise of the return of the Jewish People is fulfilled."
Kirshenzaft said that he was not present at the time of that oath, because as the secretary of Hatzar Adar he was imprisoned in Ashkelon each of the seven times that the members of Hatzar Adar returned and were evacuated by the police. He said, however, that the vow is still in force:
"My children know that we will return. Just like we returned to the Old City and to other places that some people never thought we would return to, we will come back to those areas as well. True, the memories of these places are not as distinct as we would like - I noticed that in some of the religious-Zionist literature of the past week there was no mention of the sad anniversary, and I told the editors, and they said it would be corrected - but in any event we will never forget this area and the terrible catastrophe that befell us here 21 years ago."
Uri Elitzur, who headed the Movement to Stop the Withdrawal from the Sinai - he served later as the head of Binyamin Netanyahu's Prime Ministerial Bureau - was asked on Arutz-7 this morning if he had succeeded in arousing the public at the time. "At the beginning," he said, "we set off on a struggle that appeared totally hopeless and detached from reality. In the end, our efforts were a major topic of discussion in the media and in the Knesset. Thousands of people responded to our call to come to the area or try to stop the withdrawal in other ways - but the bottom line, of course, is that we did not succeed."
Asked what his conclusions are, Elitzur said,
"For one thing, our efforts flew in the face of common logic to a certain extent. The agreement had already been signed, Israel had obligated itself in front of the whole world in what the government thought was its most important agreement ever, and along came a bunch of young guys hoping to change everything... Why, then, did we do it? This may be the most important lesson, in my opinion. I call it the 'struggle of the sail.' When a person sits in a boat and the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, it's obvious that he can't fight against the wind. He thus has two choices: to give up, or to prepare a sail in the hope that G-d will have mercy and change the wind direction - in which case he'll be ready! At that time, G-d did not change the wind, but we built the sail - which is what believing Jews are supposed to do in this type of situation... Today, things are very different, in that the State of Israel has not signed any agreement, and even the Rabin-Peres government refused to make any commitment to dismantle even one Yesha community. This is most certainly due, partially, to our efforts in trying to stop the withdrawal from the Sinai..."