Former Gush Katif residents and several Likud MKs met this week at the Jerusalem Gold Hotel, where many of the families have been deposited. One woman from N'vei Dekalim cried out,
"What do you want? That we should just evaporate? Every plan that arises falls a second later because there is no money or whatever. You had money to put up new gravestones, so that there wouldn't be a scandal - but money for a roof over our heads you don't have. What harm did we do to you? Everyone says that the disengagement is behind us - but behind who? We're jailed here in the hotel. Our lives are stuck in a container and we don't see an end."
B'Sheva correspondent Ariel Kahane visited the Gold Hotel this week, and reported,
"Two and a half months after the erasure of the communities, and the emotional stability of the residents is deteriorating. Thousands of them are still closed up in cages of gold, conducting lives on the fringe of sanity. Children are sometimes locked out of their parents' automatic-lock rooms, while others receive a cold stare of rebuke from hotel workers for having taken an apple from the kitchen between meals. Some teenagers steal out of their rooms in the middle of the night to who-knows-where, while their parents in the other room have no control; their own situation is not much better."
"This impossible situation," Kahane writes, "weakens their stature, and accelerates fissures in their family structure. Many of the adults are not working, and there are already couples that are beginning to crack because of the forced idleness."
The problems do not exist only in the hotels. Many of the several hundred families in the new caravila [small and temporary pre-fab housing] village of Nitzan, north of Ashkelon, have no jobs and an uncertain housing future. The former Gush Katif community of Bdolach is a prime example:
Some 35 Bdolach families (out of close to 40 that lived there on the eve of the expulsion) are currently in Nitzan - but of these, 30 were farmers, and only one of them has begun to work the fields!
"That particular man was both industrious and fortunate," said Chaim B., who lived in Bdolach for the last six months of its existence, "as his parents had a plot of land on a moshav that they were not working, so he took it over. But everyone else is reduced to waiting for solutions from the government - and this involves finding land, problems of its distance from their homes, what type of agriculture, beginning anew, and the like. For people in their late 40's and 50's, it's not easy to start again - and especially when so much is settled."
Chaim said that though there was much to do until now - "all sorts of arrangements, preparing for the holidays, etc." - now begins a potentially dangerous period of near-total idleness and boredom. "Some of the men used to study for an hour or two each day in the nearby Torat HaChaim yeshiva in N'vei Dekalim [which has re-located to Yad Binyamin, a half-hour drive away - ed.], but that arrangement has not yet been reinstated... They need jobs!"
For others, the problems of boredom have not yet begun - because they are still busy figuring out where to live for the coming months. Some 30 families of the former Moshav Katif have moved to the King Saul Hotel in Ashkelon, after having lived for two months in the dormitories of the Kfar Pines Girls High School. Ten other Katif families moved to the Atzmonah "Faith City" (Ir HaEmunah) encampment near Netivot, hoping to join up with their former townsmen as soon as possible.
Though they have chosen a site for the new permanent community they wish to build - in the Lachish area - they have been on a roller-coaster ride regarding where to live for the coming two years. The possibility of Eibim near Sderot was nixed at the last moment by the government; Nehushah was on the table for a while but became irrelevant; Even Shmuel was then proposed - and now Moshav Amatziah appears to be the most likely.
Aryeh, of Moshav Katif, told Arutz-7 today, "Some of our people are right now on a tour of Amatziah, and this could be the best option, as it is very close to our permanent site. Even the government appears to be coming towards us, hoping that we will be their first successful community; until now the government has not succeeded in finding a communal solution for even one town! The high-rise apartment building for Kfar Darom is still stuck, etc., and they're hoping that they can succeed with us. They've even offered to build a new road between Shomeriyah, where Atzmonah is supposed to go, and Amatziah, so that we'll be able to send our children to school there. We have also asked for special consideration - larger caravans - for our large families. We hope that within a week or two, we'll have answers as to whether, once and for all, something will finally work out."
Aryeh explained that Moshav Katif is currently divided up into four different locations - two Ashkelon hotels, Yad Binyamin, and Ir HaEmunah - and that they greatly fear that they will not end up together in one community. "One of the main reasons we are so anxious to remain unified," he explained, "in addition to simply wanting to retain our beautiful community, is to help the 6-7 families that for various reasons are not eligible for government help. We don't want them to fall by the wayside."
One community that did not survive the expulsion and simply shattered into small pieces is Slav. Formerly located in the southwestern tip of the Gaza Strip, Slav was a small and young town of only 12 families - each of which is now on its own. One family with two children had been living for the past several weeks in one room in the Otzem pre-military preparatory yeshiva, where the husband studied, but the conditions finally became unbearable; they moved this week, on their own, to a private apartment near her parents. Other families live in Ir HaEmunah, Yad Binyamin, or on their own - and the community of Slav no longer exists.
"What do you want? That we should just evaporate? Every plan that arises falls a second later because there is no money or whatever. You had money to put up new gravestones, so that there wouldn't be a scandal - but money for a roof over our heads you don't have. What harm did we do to you? Everyone says that the disengagement is behind us - but behind who? We're jailed here in the hotel. Our lives are stuck in a container and we don't see an end."
B'Sheva correspondent Ariel Kahane visited the Gold Hotel this week, and reported,
"Two and a half months after the erasure of the communities, and the emotional stability of the residents is deteriorating. Thousands of them are still closed up in cages of gold, conducting lives on the fringe of sanity. Children are sometimes locked out of their parents' automatic-lock rooms, while others receive a cold stare of rebuke from hotel workers for having taken an apple from the kitchen between meals. Some teenagers steal out of their rooms in the middle of the night to who-knows-where, while their parents in the other room have no control; their own situation is not much better."
"This impossible situation," Kahane writes, "weakens their stature, and accelerates fissures in their family structure. Many of the adults are not working, and there are already couples that are beginning to crack because of the forced idleness."
The problems do not exist only in the hotels. Many of the several hundred families in the new caravila [small and temporary pre-fab housing] village of Nitzan, north of Ashkelon, have no jobs and an uncertain housing future. The former Gush Katif community of Bdolach is a prime example:
Some 35 Bdolach families (out of close to 40 that lived there on the eve of the expulsion) are currently in Nitzan - but of these, 30 were farmers, and only one of them has begun to work the fields!
"That particular man was both industrious and fortunate," said Chaim B., who lived in Bdolach for the last six months of its existence, "as his parents had a plot of land on a moshav that they were not working, so he took it over. But everyone else is reduced to waiting for solutions from the government - and this involves finding land, problems of its distance from their homes, what type of agriculture, beginning anew, and the like. For people in their late 40's and 50's, it's not easy to start again - and especially when so much is settled."
Chaim said that though there was much to do until now - "all sorts of arrangements, preparing for the holidays, etc." - now begins a potentially dangerous period of near-total idleness and boredom. "Some of the men used to study for an hour or two each day in the nearby Torat HaChaim yeshiva in N'vei Dekalim [which has re-located to Yad Binyamin, a half-hour drive away - ed.], but that arrangement has not yet been reinstated... They need jobs!"
For others, the problems of boredom have not yet begun - because they are still busy figuring out where to live for the coming months. Some 30 families of the former Moshav Katif have moved to the King Saul Hotel in Ashkelon, after having lived for two months in the dormitories of the Kfar Pines Girls High School. Ten other Katif families moved to the Atzmonah "Faith City" (Ir HaEmunah) encampment near Netivot, hoping to join up with their former townsmen as soon as possible.
Though they have chosen a site for the new permanent community they wish to build - in the Lachish area - they have been on a roller-coaster ride regarding where to live for the coming two years. The possibility of Eibim near Sderot was nixed at the last moment by the government; Nehushah was on the table for a while but became irrelevant; Even Shmuel was then proposed - and now Moshav Amatziah appears to be the most likely.
Aryeh, of Moshav Katif, told Arutz-7 today, "Some of our people are right now on a tour of Amatziah, and this could be the best option, as it is very close to our permanent site. Even the government appears to be coming towards us, hoping that we will be their first successful community; until now the government has not succeeded in finding a communal solution for even one town! The high-rise apartment building for Kfar Darom is still stuck, etc., and they're hoping that they can succeed with us. They've even offered to build a new road between Shomeriyah, where Atzmonah is supposed to go, and Amatziah, so that we'll be able to send our children to school there. We have also asked for special consideration - larger caravans - for our large families. We hope that within a week or two, we'll have answers as to whether, once and for all, something will finally work out."
Aryeh explained that Moshav Katif is currently divided up into four different locations - two Ashkelon hotels, Yad Binyamin, and Ir HaEmunah - and that they greatly fear that they will not end up together in one community. "One of the main reasons we are so anxious to remain unified," he explained, "in addition to simply wanting to retain our beautiful community, is to help the 6-7 families that for various reasons are not eligible for government help. We don't want them to fall by the wayside."
One community that did not survive the expulsion and simply shattered into small pieces is Slav. Formerly located in the southwestern tip of the Gaza Strip, Slav was a small and young town of only 12 families - each of which is now on its own. One family with two children had been living for the past several weeks in one room in the Otzem pre-military preparatory yeshiva, where the husband studied, but the conditions finally became unbearable; they moved this week, on their own, to a private apartment near her parents. Other families live in Ir HaEmunah, Yad Binyamin, or on their own - and the community of Slav no longer exists.