Dvir Hemo was 11 years old when he stepped in front of a car one Saturday evening on his way to get pizza. By sunset the next day, his body had been interred in the small, neat cemetery in the Jewish settlement block of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, where the Star of David flies over 46 graves.
For the past two and a half years, Dvir’s mother, Iris, has visited his grave — at first every day, then at least once a week. But she faces the agony of leaving her dead son behind when, this summer, she and her family are forced to leave their homes on Palestinian land.
Dvir’s whole short life was tied to Gush Katif, said Hemo; every memory she has of him is there. ”I don’t want to think about what will happen to my son’s grave,” she said. ”I pray every day that evacuation won’t happen.”
Dvir’s tombstone lies behind a tall fence and padlocked gates a few hundred metres from the teeming and dilapidated Palestinian refugee camp of Khan Yunis, where 40 000 people live in overcrowded cinder block homes under Israeli army watchtowers. It is very different from the tidy bungalows, green lawns and wide avenues of Gush Katif, home to 5 500 Jewish settlers.
In a few months, that land — with other colonies in Gaza and the northern West Bank — will be returned to the Palestinians as part of Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan.
Some of the settlers are reconciled to the pullout and have accepted the Israeli government’s offer of compensation of up to $350 000 (R2 297 083). But most are bitter about what they see as Sharon’s betrayal and some — about a third, according to the prime minister’s office — are planning to refuse to leave their homes. A much smaller minority say they will fight the police and soldiers carrying out the plan, but the government fears that up to 10 000 militant West Bank settlers will try to reinforce them.
Hemo (40) has agreed to go, with the other two dozen families in her small agricultural settlement near the border with Egypt. But, she said, they still have not been told where they will be relocated. ”We agreed to go as an insurance policy, in case they do evacuate this place,” she said. ”But I hope they won’t.”
Her hope is shared by many of the settlers, who refuse to believe that Sharon will fulfil his pledge that ”in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza”. But Sharon and his key aides are resolute.
Denial
With less than three months to go, many practical issues have yet to be resolved. The problem, say officials, is that many settlers are in denial about disengagement, veering between refusing to accept the evacuation and complaining of a lack of proper information about their options.
The government’s determination to see through its plan will become evident from the third week of July, when the authorities will close off the Gaza settlements to prevent militants reinforcing the resistance.
From mid-August, the police, backed by the army, will go from house to house to forcibly remove settlers who have not left. ”Those who won’t move will be moved,” said a senior government official. ”We hope there will not be casualties, but any scenario is possible. To say it will be smooth is unrealistic, but we hope it will be clean.”
Settlers will be temporarily housed in mobile homes, hotels and even tents. The uncertainty means hundreds, possibly thousands, of settler children are expected to be without school places by the beginning of term in early September.
Israel has assured the Palestinian Authority that it will leave intact basic infrastructure — roads, sewerage, power lines — but no decision has been taken on whether to demolish the housing. If the houses are left intact, Israelis expect Palestinians from the refugee camps will claim them, or that they will be distributed among Palestinian politicians and officials. Either way, said one Israeli official, ”Hamas will dance on our rooftops”.
But demolition brings its own problems. Removing debris from the Gaza settlements could take three months and 2 500 lorries, officials say, resulting in a presence in Gaza for longer than they want.
”I don’t want to think about what will happen to my house,” said Hemo.
”It has a lot of memories for me. All my children were born here. If I knew that I would have to leave one day, I would not have come here.”
Her feelings were echoed by Michael Gold, a 55-year-old British-born doctor, who has lived and worked for 13 years in Neve Dekalim, a settlement in the Gush Katif block. ”This is a nice place to live, my children have friends, my wife is happy, the climate is nice. I don’t see why this place should be Jew-free. There’s nowhere else in the world where it’s accepted that Jews are not allowed. When the police or soldiers come, I will invite them into my home, but I won’t go.
”The idea that we will come out of Gaza and Samaria [the northern West Bank] and then there will be peace — no one believes that.”
Passive resistance
The Jews of the northern Gaza settlement of Elei Sinai also say they will passively resist. ”We will just stay in our houses,” said Avi Farchan, who has lived there for 23 years. ”When the soldiers come, we will give them tea. Psychologically they won’t be able to move us.”
Of the 90 families in Elei Sinai, only eight have agreed to leave, said Farchan. ”The strong core are struggling for their homes,” he said. ”And the best way to struggle is to continue living here. Five years of terror has not broken us, but it has broken the government. Israel is fleeing the Islamic fundamentalist terror, but the terror will come after it.”
The practical details of disengagement — how much force to use, where to take people, how to find new schools and jobs, what to leave behind — are being hammered out, although officials are aware that time is running out.
”Things are not going at the tempo we expected,” said Yonatan Bassi, head of the body coordinating resettlement. ”We are having to lead people by the hand. They need to begin their lives in a new place, but we need thousands of solutions to thousands of individual problems.”
The cemetery at Gush Katif is one of the most sensitive of those problems. A decision to disinter the remains in the 46 graves and rebury them in Israel is expected, and delicate negotiations are under way.
For Hemo, the uncertain future of her son’s remains outweighs all other considerations. ”They are telling me to start again. But I built my life here. If I’d thought for a second that we would be forced to leave, I wouldn’t have laid him to rest here,” she said. – Guardian Unlimited Â