fbpx

Gush Katif: Rebuilding and healing 10 years later

A drive through the Israeli city of Nitzan tells the story of the slow, painful rehabilitation of the communities of Gush Katif, the former settlement bloc known as the “harvest belt” of Gaza before Israel’s withdrawal 10 years ago.
[additional-authors]
August 4, 2015

A drive through the Israeli city of Nitzan tells the story of the slow, painful rehabilitation of the communities of Gush Katif, the former settlement bloc known as the “harvest belt” of Gaza before Israel’s withdrawal 10 years ago. Located between Ashdod and Ashkelon, about 45 miles north of Gaza City, Nitzan has been the main absorption site of the evacuees torn from their homes in the summer of 2005 as part of the “disengagement” from Gaza, which the evacuees continue to refer to as the “expulsion.”

Today, the temporary housing site to which they were moved looks like a slum. Makeshift synagogues are only now closing, and the remaining dank shops clearly rely on the community for charitable business. Weeds grow on the plots of “caravillas,” the government euphemism for the pre-fab housing structures that have been relocated elsewhere as residents moved out. Human-size sewer pipes decorated with graffiti — the makeshift community bomb shelters — adorn the parking courtyards of the worn-out structures.

About a half-mile away, a garden-lined road has turned around the unseemly vision of the weeds and scrap metal. An impressive school building — a new girls school — recalls the well-kept, pretty community buildings that were once in Gush Katif, and it leads the way to the new site of Neve Dekalim, the most urban of the 21 settlements of Gush Katif that were destroyed. The residents have expanded the already existing community of Nitzan, and the desert homes say: “We’ve finally rebuilt … sort of.”

This picturesque image should not negate the suffering and neglect experienced by the evacuees, said Hagit Yaron, a member of the Gush Katif Committee, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of the communities with government agencies.

“The government of Israel knew how to expel Jews in one summer; over 10 years, it didn’t know how to reinstate their communities,” Yaron said, sitting under the canopy at the entrance to the temporary site of the Gush Katif and Northern Samaria Commemoration Center in Nitzan, a state-sponsored exhibition center memorializing the legacy of modern Jewish settlement in Gaza. The government assumed evacuees would take their compensation money and buy or rent in whatever town or city suited their fancy, but they insisted on sticking together as communities.

“It didn’t understand we speak the language of community, which is a different language,” Yaron said. 

Yaron is originally from Neve Dekalim. Her husband, a mechanic, managed to find new partners to rebuild his business, but, she said, not everyone has been so fortunate. 

“People who didn’t fight for their homes, who didn’t resist, it’s very hard for them. They have a tortured conscience. They wonder, ‘How did we let this happen?’ I know I’m at peace with myself. I did what I could.” — Einat Bloch Yefet

“There are families whose money ran out. They haven’t worked for 10 years, and they spent all their compensation money; there are those who were cheated by investors.”

Among the hardest hit are those men and women who were older than 50 at the time of the evacuation who ran established businesses in Gush Katif, usually in agriculture, or who had jobs in Gush Katif but who now find themselves feeling too old to start over or to be hired.

Until today, all but three of the Gush Katif settlement communities have been rebuilt throughout Israel; some have created new towns named after their former ones, while others have joined existing towns. Of the approximately 1,300 families that have chosen to stick with their communities, 900 have settled into permanent homes; 170 are in the process of building them; and 200 families have still not found solutions. It took about four years for the first families to move into their permanent homes, usually with compensation money the were given according to the appraised value of their home in Gush Katif, which, by the time they were ready to build, had depreciated considerably. Some evacuees with lesser means opted to have their caravillas transferred to a new site and reoutfitted for permanent living. 

“There is a feeling among some of the people of failure — that they didn’t succeed as much as the others,” Yaron said. 

Yaron is well aware of criticism by pro-disengagement activists, who argued that the evacuees should have cooperated with the government. 

“You could not fight it and negotiate with the government at the same time,” she said. “They require two different spiritual energies.” She’s noted that even those who cooperated are no better off.

According to a study of teenage evacuees conducted by Mahut, a nonprofit dedicated to emergency preparedness and treating post-trauma, and which from the outset advocated for the Jewish communities in Gaza and northern Samaria, resistance to the pullout contributed to the teens’ resilience in the face of the trauma of the pullout.

“We do have evidence that people who did not struggle at all, who just left before the time, were not more prepared and did not adjust better,” said Miriam Shapira, co-director of Mahut. 

The study also found that sticking together as a community contributed to the healing process.

“We see that youngsters very much used their communities, their sense of belong to a community,” Shapira said. “It gave them a lot of meaning and a lot of strength.”

Nonetheless, 10 years later, some of these former teens are still seeking psychological counseling, especially as they transition into adulthood and a life with a family of their own. 

Einat Bloch Yefet, who lives now with her husband and two children in the new Netzer Hazani, said she experienced an emotional and spiritual breakdown after she was forced to leave her home at age 18. Today, she conducts lectures on tools for overcoming trauma, guided by her experience of first losing a brother to Islamic terrorism in Gaza, and then her home. She has no regrets about leaving on her terms; she compares it to never giving up on a loved one dying of cancer.

“People who didn’t fight for their homes, who didn’t resist, it’s very hard for them,” she said. “They have a tortured conscience. They wonder, ‘How did we let this happen?’ I know I’m at peace with myself. I did what I could.”

Public and private commemoration ceremonies marking the Gaza withdrawal are taking place throughout Israel, but Yaron is not optimistic that the government will ever take responsibility for its failure to resettle the evacuees swiftly, fairly and with sensitivity. 

But what pains her most is the continuing sense of longing. “It was a good life. We had a great regional council. Good people. A love of work and Torah and a sense of mission, which I don’t have anymore. I miss the view. From Nitzan, you don’t see the ocean.”

Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.

Editor's Picks

Latest Articles

More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.