For long-time Jewish and Arab friends, disengagement is a double edge sword
By Rafael D. Frankel
PEAT SADEH, Gaza—On the bottom floor of a house that no longer exists, two Palestinians and one Israeli shared a meal two weeks ago that they hope will not be their last together.
Ya’akov Abrigil, Tasir Abu Shaluf, and Sabri Sadudi swapped stories, hugs, shed a few tears, and said they would see each other soon, even though that is far from certain. Their friendship, which is more than a decade old is now, in the hands of politicians.
Though Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza is being hailed around the world as a courageous step toward peace in this war-torn region, it is also tearing apart relationships between Jews and Arabs here that transcended violence and politics for more than two decades.
Soon after Abrigil, 73, moved to this Jewish town in Gush Katif 18 years ago, he built a series of greenhouses in which he grew cucumbers, tomatoes, and sweet peppers. Throughout the years, Abrigil relied on Palestinian workers to provide most of the labor needed to maintain the greenhouses and grow and harvest the crops.
Over time, the bonds they formed turned into much more than a standard employer-employee relationship.
“They’re our family,” Abrigil said. “Some of them have worked for us since they were teenagers.”
Shaluf and Sadudi both described a relationship with Abrigil in the same terms and took pride in seeing each other’s children and grand children grow up—though because of security restrictions the children themselves never came to know each other.
“Their house was always open and we never had any problems with money,” Shaluf said of Abrigil.
Unlike many of the Jewish towns in Gaza, the residents of Peat Sadeh did not put up a fight against their eviction, nor did they wait for the army to forcibly remove them. In the final days of Peat Sadeh’s existence, only a lack of tumbleweed blowing across the pavement prevented comparisons to an Old West ghost town.
Many of the once luxurious villas were stripped down to the stucco walls. Doors, window glass, floor tiling, cupboards and closets, kitchen appliances, and even the red shingles on many roofs were removed by their former owners who took everything of value with them. On the shells of the homes that remained standing, graffiti in red spray paint told tales of the former village and its occupants.
“Here lived in fun the Amin family,” it was written on one home. “Gush Katif forever!”
In those days, when the end was nigh, the friends said they were dealing with separation anxiety. “For a week I didn’t see him and I was mad,” Shaluf said. “These are our last hours together and we are neighbors.”
In the end, Abrigil did come by, even visiting the house of one of his workers in Mawassi—the neighboring Palestinian town—to visit his sick mother.
From his second-story balcony with a view of sand dunes and palm trees which eventually give way to the grey concrete apartments of Mawassi and then the sparkling waters of the Mediterranean Sea, Abrigil pointed to a series of cream-colored oblong tents pitched amongst the dunes.
Wiping a tear from his eye, he spoke of the greenhouses and the friends he was leaving here. “They are harvesting now, and everything they can pick I’m giving to them,” he said.
Abrigil is also paying his workers three months’ wage—a severance package for a dozen years of work which he said still doesn’t rightfully compensate them.
Unlike the Jews who are vacating Gaza, the hundreds of Palestinian workers they are leaving behind are not receiving any compensation for lost jobs. Though a deal seems to have been struck whereby most of the greenhouses will be saved for the Palestinians to take over, the workers themselves are not optimistic about their prospects for continued meaningful employment.
“We heard maybe someone will buy the greenhouses, but it’s just talk. Arabs always talk but who knows what will happen,” Sadudi said. Along with Shaluf, he has little to no confidence in the Palestinian Authority to manage the greenhouses well “and without corruption.”
What the two really want is to be able to work for Abrigil at his new home in Mavki'im, a town just north of Gaza where the entire 26 families of Peat Sadeh have relocated to together.
So far that has not been possible as Israel is, for the most part, not allowing Palestinian workers out of Gaza until after the disengagement—including the uprooting of the Israeli army—is complete.
Contacted recently, Abrigil said he has not received any word from authorities about when or if Shaluf, Sadudi, and others will be allowed into Israel despite repeated requests. He would keep trying, he said.
“If they let us into Israel it will be fine,” Shaluf said at Peat Sadeh. “But if it’s closed to us, then what will we do?”
©2005 The Media Line
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
Last targeted settlements cleared
Last targeted settlements cleared
Israeli forces carry out the entire planned evacuation of all settlers in Gaza and at 4 sites in the West Bank in one week with little violence but no shortage of anguish
By Christine Spolar and Rafael D. Frankel, Chicago Tribune. Christine Spolar reported from Homesh, and Rafael D. Frankel reported from Sanur
Published August 24, 2005
HOMESH, West Bank -- Israeli forces Tuesday overwhelmed the hilltop settlements of Homesh and Sanur with practiced assurance, finishing a pullout of thousands of Jewish settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank in a week's time.
After swiftly completing the evacuation of 25 settlements in Palestinian territories, the army now will focus on ending its presence in Gaza.
Houses left by the settlers will be razed in the next 10 days, army officials said. Graves already are being moved, and religious buildings will be destroyed. The withdrawal will be complete when Israeli troops uproot their barracks and checkpoints to leave the Gaza Strip, probably within weeks, to Palestinian Authority rule.
"It's finished but it's not over," Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the army chief of staff, said Tuesday night as troops still were wrangling with the last civilian in Homesh.
The Israeli government has voiced concerns that Palestinians, eager to claim a victory from the withdrawal, will try to enter the settlement sites during the transition. Israeli soldiers are expected to leave no later than early October.
The pullout from the West Bank was the final planned eviction of Jews from land where the Palestinians want to form a state. Twenty-one settlements in Gaza were emptied beginning Aug. 17. Two other settlements in the West Bank, Kadim and Ganim, already were largely vacated.
In Homesh and Sanur, army officials had feared that some settlers, who believed they were reclaiming biblical land for the Jewish state, would fight violently to remain.
Instead, the West Bank settlements, largely religious and right-wing, fell quickly, and soldiers saw no new wrinkles to the pattern of resistance. Army officials said Tuesday night that homes there also will be razed.
`Not volunteering'
Yedidya Lerner, a Homesh settlement spokesman, said Tuesday that the settlers never were armed for the withdrawal and none planned a radical protest. He resented reports that the government considered Homesh an armed threat. The army had negotiated throughout the day with rabbis.
"We're not volunteering to leave the Holy Land," Lerner said. "We won't be embracing these soldiers. We were sorry to see that it was very easy for them in [Gaza]."
Settlers wailed, climbed onto roofs, sprayed troops with water and flour and locked themselves into synagogues to evade eviction. Soldiers used bulldozers in Homesh and cranes in Sanur to break through to the most troublesome settlers. In both communities, troops gave the settlers time to shout themselves into a weakened, though hysterical, state.
In Homesh the army evacuated 709 civilians; one civilian and five police and soldiers were slightly hurt in the confrontations. In Sanur, 620 people were evacuated; one civilian and four police and soldiers were slightly wounded, army officials said.
In the past few days, authorities added, both communities were largely filled with infiltrators protesting the pullout.
In Homesh, infiltrators took control of houses already vacated. Dozens of men and boys locked themselves into the community's synagogue and yeshiva. At one point, 80 girls took over the second floor of a house and sang and danced as soldiers waited outside.
When young women soldiers were sent in, the resisters kicked and screamed for hours. Other girls hurled bags of oil, vinegar and eggs
The synagogue was breached later by troops who first took over the roof and then drilled open the front door.
In Sanur, two dozen girls barricaded themselves inside the courtyard of an art gallery. At an old British police building, 80 resisters sought refuge on the rooftop and dozens more locked themselves inside the building. Security forces used cranes to lift and evacuate them.
In both communities, residents hurled insults at the soldiers as they walked into town.
In Homesh, Mihael Manasherov seethed over how the Israeli army was, as he said, "being used" in an unjust cause.
`Army for Palestine'
"They look like an army for Palestine, not the Israeli army," said Manasherov, an emigre from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, who has lived 14 years in the settlement.
Manasherov, a grandfather of 10, could not hold back his ire as troops walked past the door of his two-bedroom house where a large Israeli flag fluttered. Nothing inside his home was boxed or packed, but the 66-year-old wanted to spend his last few moments in Homesh with soldiers.
"Go on, army of Palestine," he said in a calm, quiet voice to some startled troops. "You're robots."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune
Israeli forces carry out the entire planned evacuation of all settlers in Gaza and at 4 sites in the West Bank in one week with little violence but no shortage of anguish
By Christine Spolar and Rafael D. Frankel, Chicago Tribune. Christine Spolar reported from Homesh, and Rafael D. Frankel reported from Sanur
Published August 24, 2005
HOMESH, West Bank -- Israeli forces Tuesday overwhelmed the hilltop settlements of Homesh and Sanur with practiced assurance, finishing a pullout of thousands of Jewish settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank in a week's time.
After swiftly completing the evacuation of 25 settlements in Palestinian territories, the army now will focus on ending its presence in Gaza.
Houses left by the settlers will be razed in the next 10 days, army officials said. Graves already are being moved, and religious buildings will be destroyed. The withdrawal will be complete when Israeli troops uproot their barracks and checkpoints to leave the Gaza Strip, probably within weeks, to Palestinian Authority rule.
"It's finished but it's not over," Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the army chief of staff, said Tuesday night as troops still were wrangling with the last civilian in Homesh.
The Israeli government has voiced concerns that Palestinians, eager to claim a victory from the withdrawal, will try to enter the settlement sites during the transition. Israeli soldiers are expected to leave no later than early October.
The pullout from the West Bank was the final planned eviction of Jews from land where the Palestinians want to form a state. Twenty-one settlements in Gaza were emptied beginning Aug. 17. Two other settlements in the West Bank, Kadim and Ganim, already were largely vacated.
In Homesh and Sanur, army officials had feared that some settlers, who believed they were reclaiming biblical land for the Jewish state, would fight violently to remain.
Instead, the West Bank settlements, largely religious and right-wing, fell quickly, and soldiers saw no new wrinkles to the pattern of resistance. Army officials said Tuesday night that homes there also will be razed.
`Not volunteering'
Yedidya Lerner, a Homesh settlement spokesman, said Tuesday that the settlers never were armed for the withdrawal and none planned a radical protest. He resented reports that the government considered Homesh an armed threat. The army had negotiated throughout the day with rabbis.
"We're not volunteering to leave the Holy Land," Lerner said. "We won't be embracing these soldiers. We were sorry to see that it was very easy for them in [Gaza]."
Settlers wailed, climbed onto roofs, sprayed troops with water and flour and locked themselves into synagogues to evade eviction. Soldiers used bulldozers in Homesh and cranes in Sanur to break through to the most troublesome settlers. In both communities, troops gave the settlers time to shout themselves into a weakened, though hysterical, state.
In Homesh the army evacuated 709 civilians; one civilian and five police and soldiers were slightly hurt in the confrontations. In Sanur, 620 people were evacuated; one civilian and four police and soldiers were slightly wounded, army officials said.
In the past few days, authorities added, both communities were largely filled with infiltrators protesting the pullout.
In Homesh, infiltrators took control of houses already vacated. Dozens of men and boys locked themselves into the community's synagogue and yeshiva. At one point, 80 girls took over the second floor of a house and sang and danced as soldiers waited outside.
When young women soldiers were sent in, the resisters kicked and screamed for hours. Other girls hurled bags of oil, vinegar and eggs
The synagogue was breached later by troops who first took over the roof and then drilled open the front door.
In Sanur, two dozen girls barricaded themselves inside the courtyard of an art gallery. At an old British police building, 80 resisters sought refuge on the rooftop and dozens more locked themselves inside the building. Security forces used cranes to lift and evacuate them.
In both communities, residents hurled insults at the soldiers as they walked into town.
In Homesh, Mihael Manasherov seethed over how the Israeli army was, as he said, "being used" in an unjust cause.
`Army for Palestine'
"They look like an army for Palestine, not the Israeli army," said Manasherov, an emigre from the former Soviet republic of Georgia, who has lived 14 years in the settlement.
Manasherov, a grandfather of 10, could not hold back his ire as troops walked past the door of his two-bedroom house where a large Israeli flag fluttered. Nothing inside his home was boxed or packed, but the 66-year-old wanted to spend his last few moments in Homesh with soldiers.
"Go on, army of Palestine," he said in a calm, quiet voice to some startled troops. "You're robots."
©2005 The Chicago Tribune