Former Gush Katif residents battle stagnation and depression

By Rafael D. Frankel

MAFKI’IM—One week ago, Ya’akov Abrigil picked up a saw for the first time in his life and started building a wooden picket fence. Among the raw lots of Mafki’im, where 25 prefabricated homes stand out against the pervasive dirt, occasional replanted palm trees and out of place green manicured lawns, the fence is a lone, stubborn symbol of a man who refuses to give in to what he sees all around him.

“I need to do something,” Abrigil, 47, a former resident of Peat Sadeh in Gush Katif said, throwing both his palms in the air. “People here have nothing to do with themselves. All day long they sit. I’m afraid of the day when I sit,” said the father of four who admitted that was all he did during his initial days here.

Sitting is a way of life in this small settlement just a few kilometers north of Gaza which took in 18 families from Peat Sadeh and seven from Rafiah Yam after the disengagement. The sedentary days of its residents are a far cry from the years of farming they knew until now, and their perpetual lack of motion lays in sharp contrast to the tractors, steam rollers, and construction crews who are busy laying roads and landscaping the new neighborhood of their adopted town.

Without jobs, and still in a state of shock over the loss of their homes and land, many here are beset with stagnation—a state of being they have never known and can see no way out of.

“Some of my friends get in their cars and drive in circles,” Abrigil said. Others “don’t even have the will to get out of bed in the morning.”

For the most part, the former Gush Katif residents spend their days lounging on plastic lawn furniture in front of their temporary homes. They sip coffee, smoke cigarettes and then repeat each of those ordinary acts on another plastic chair in front of a different prefabricated house where they find minimal solace in the companionship of friends in the same state of mind.

Rami and Ruti Ya’akov, Amos Burdeh, and Tzion Yitzchak, all of whom lived in Gush Katif for at least 18 years, were doing just that on Sunday as they helped a Thai worker they knew find a flight back to Bangkok. They joked that at least he had a home to go back to.

“Everyone here are farmers and there is nowhere for us to farm,” Rami Ya’akov, 40, said. Though the government is in the process of finding them new land, Ya’akov said no one in Mafki’im is expecting to plant crops until next summer.

While the parents here struggle to find what to do with their lives until then, their children are confronting challenges of their own. Adjusting to new schools has not been easy, Burdeh, 50, said of his three children, who are 7, 10, and 14 years old and were divided into three different schools around Nitzanim, Yad Mordechai and S’derot.

His oldest girl has fallen into a depression and does not want to meet her new classmates. “She’s sitting at home all day,” he said. “I can’t even make her smile.”

Up the road, the mood is mixed among the 273 families who have flooded into the expeditiously developed New Nitzanim, where mounds of soil, coils of fiber optic cable, and flats of roof tiles wrapped in plastic lay on the side of the road into town.

“Everyone is dealing with the situation individually,” said Chen From, a volunteer from Even Yehuda. The 23-year-old is running after school activities for children “who have nothing else to do,” adding that high unemployment has also rendered many of the adults listless.

Though a precious few are happier in Nitzanim because of the improved security situation, most still feel slighted by the government. “I hope Sharon pays the prices for this,” said one resident who would not give his name because he was “tired of talking to journalists.”

While affirming the right of that attitude, Tziporah Sharabi, who came from Gadid with her family, said it is also counterproductive. “It was terrible what happened, but slowly, slowly we are moving on,” she said. “It’s not good for the soul to only talk about the bad and see only the half-empty glass.”

Sharabi spoke from her new and temporary 90-square-meter prefabricated home, located at the end of a block of identical dwellings reserved for former Gadid residents. At the entrance to their cul-de-sac, the “Welcome to Gadid” sign which once stood at the gate to the former settlement continues to greet all who enter.

“Since we came together as a community it’s probably not as hard,” the mother of five said. “The friendship continues even if the place does not.”

Unlike many of her friends, Sharabi wants to work in the nursery here to regain her former job. “There are a lot of people who are still mad at the state who don’t want to go back to work. For me, I can’t stay home.”

For her husband, Yichiam, it is a different story. Already passed 50 years old, he feels to old to start over with more greenhouses. On Sunday, the slender man with dark skin and a disarming smile, who a month ago traipsed around his land in Gush Katif with a light step and a contented air about him, was “keeping himself busy buying a refrigerator,” his wife said dryly.

Back at Mafki’im, Ya’akov Abrigil was feeling antsy following a twenty-minute break from building his fence. After plugging a drill bit into its socket, he grabbed five nails and put them in his mouth, holding them with his pursed lips as he checked to make sure the fence rail was on straight before drilling it in for good.

Catching a glimpse of his new town, he paused for a minute and surveyed the scene. At four adjacent homes, his neighbors sat languidly on their porches. “Everyone wants to be optimistic that things will be good here,” he said, taking the nails out of his mouth to speak. “We are trying to be strong because we know there is no chance to go back, but really, people here are in a sorry state.”

©2005 Rafael D. Frankel and The Jerusalem Post