Maayan Yaday and her husband were hauling the packing cases into their new home as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his intention to clear them and all the other Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
On Tuesday, Yaday laughed off Sharon’s plan and predicted she would be living in the tiny Gaza settlement of Nezer Hazani long after the prime minister was replaced.
She is convinced of her historical and religious claim to the land, even though five years ago she was Croatian and Catholic.
”Sharon promised he would not give away our land. This is Israel, it’s not Palestine,” she said. ”In Croatia we gave up one piece of land, then they wanted another piece of land. The Muslims don’t want to stop. They want our souls and they want our blood.”
Hers is a common enough sentiment among the 7 500 Jewish settlers in Gaza.
On Tuesday, many settlers doubted that Sharon would, or could, act on his announcement on Monday that ”in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza”.
Some said that if he gave the Palestinians the Gaza settlements, he would have to give them Tel Aviv. Others claimed that removing the settlers would amount to rewarding terrorism and encourage more attacks on Israel.
There was common agreement that Israel’s Parliament would never let the prime minister get away with it.
But above all there was a sense of betrayal by the man widely known as the ”Godfather of the settlements”.
”We know Sharon because all of those years he loved Kfar Darom very much,” said Asha Mivsary, a 46-year-old religious teacher in Kfar Darom. ”Two years ago he said that Kfar Darom is as much part of Israel as Tel Aviv. I don’t know why he’s now saying the Jews have to leave. We will stay here. He will be the one to go.”
Kfar Darom’s motto is apt: ”Perseverance above all”.
Its 60 families shelter behind concrete walls, with tanks at the gates and pill boxes to protect the short but vulnerable road that runs parallel to one for Palestinians.
Five of the settlement’s residents have been shot dead and several children were wounded when a bomb blew up their bus, including siblings who lost their legs.
For some settlers, the threat from Palestinian gunmen and almost daily attacks by rudimentary mortars and rockets have proved too much, and they have left. Others say they will take the compensation on offer if Sharon really does tell them to go, principally in two smaller settlements with largely secular populations.
But most settlers say they will fight to stay, usually because of religious convictions.
”That’s one of the reasons I came here — these are religious people,” said Yaday. ”Now I am a Jew I understand that this is our land.”
She was working as a cocktail waitress on a cruise ship when she met her Israeli husband and converted to Judaism. These days her head and legs are covered.
”I feel safe with these people. I was seven years in that war in Croatia, so I’m not scared of the shooting. The most scary thing is the hate I saw. I see the same hate here with the Muslim people. But people here will not give up like the Croatians and just leave.”
Those settlers who have lived in Gush Qatif for years insist that their presence has nothing to do with the Palestinian anger. The settlers say they did not steal the land — it was unclaimed and unused.
But from the edge of the settlements it is possible to see into the seething Rafah refugee camp, where for weeks military bulldozers have been destroying hundreds of homes, ostensibly in the search for ”terrorists”, and where the army’s bullets routinely kill children.
That, say the settlers, is unfortunate, but the Jews are the real victims.
”The Arabs — the terrorists, not all Arabs — want to kill Jewish women and children,” said Mivsary. ”We want to live in peace, but we know the Arabs say they don’t want only Kfar Darom, they want all Israel. It’s not a question of giving them Kfar Darom and there will be peace. We are not the problem.”
Mivsary is counting on dissent within the shaky coalition government to block Sharon. For Anita Tucker, it will simply come down to a question of refusing to move.
The 58-year-old New Yorker was among the first settlers into Gaza when she moved to Nezer Hazani in 1975.
”My parents were forced to leave Germany, my grandparents were forced to leave Poland. I am not about to become a refugee,” she said. — Guardian Unlimited Â