At the heavy steel gates to Neve Dekalim, a few voices among the crowd of angry young religious Jews were shouting ”Nazis” and ”Gestapo” at the ranks of Israeli police massing on Monday on the road beyond. The chants disquieted others who favoured singing psalms and heartfelt appeals to Jews not to expel Jews.
But, a few blocks inside the largest of the settlements facing forced evacuation on Wednesday, Bat Sinai Jibli was oblivious to the altercations. Her veranda was piled high with cardboard packing cases and furniture, the fridge and mattresses were already on the removal lorry, and one of Jibli’s sons was unscrewing the air-conditioning unit.
”We have lived here for 22 years,” the 47-year-old mother of eight said. ”I am not going to leave until the soldiers come and take us away, but we wanted to move the furniture. All the time we’ve been crying because we are losing our life here.”
On almost every block in Neve Dekalim there were similar signs of realism as settlers faced up to the determination of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to force them out. Many settlers said they would resist until the soldiers arrived on their doorstep to haul them away, but they would send their belongings on ahead because they do not want to leave it to the army to pack up their precious things.
Around the corner from Jibli’s home, Itzik and Sarah Kortsiah cleared the furniture out of their house last week. On Monday they returned to disconnect the oven and carry it off after one last look around.
A short distance away, another family had taken up an offer from the army and was using soldiers to load belongings into the back of a military truck.
Many families were still awaiting the removal lorries, but a large proportion acknowledged the inevitable with some degree of preparation, even if it was only to buy packing cases.
The Israeli military says it believes hundreds of families will leave before Wednesday’s deadline — meaning a majority, but far from all of the 1 500 Jewish families that used to live in the Gaza settlements will be gone.
It might have been more had the army been able to get ”Operation Brotherly Hand” off the ground yesterday. Thousands of soldiers were assigned to deliver letters ordering settlers to leave the 21 Israeli colonies in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank due to be dismantled, but also to offer ”love and assistance” to help them leave.
”This is a difficult situation for us all,” the letters said. ”The [Israeli military] and the Israeli police share in the sorrow and pain you are feeling and expressing. Nevertheless we will see this mission to its end, while providing any possible help and assistance.”
The soldiers walked into some of the smaller settlements without problem and pleaded with the residents to go. Seven families in Nissanit took up the offer of help to pack; three families in Atzmona did the same.
The troops were blocked at the gates of Morag until the residents decided it might be a better tactic to let the soldiers in to see the grief of the families involved, but to refuse to accept the evacuation letters.
But the police and troops were unable to enter a handful of the most important settlements, including the most militant, Kfar Darom, and the largest, Neve Dekalim.
By sunrise, hundreds of young people were already gathered on the main road outside Neve Dekalim in an attempt to stop the army moving around. Rubbish bins and tyres were piled into barricades. Three hours later, columns of police arrived trailed by a water cannon and a bulldozer. The crowd retreated behind the heavy settlement gates, segregating itself by gender as it does at prayer.
The young women blocked the entrance gate, the youths clung to the exit. The police tried to slip in through a back route but the protesters quickly latched on to it and greeted the security forces with burning tyres and by playing a tape of a 1974 speech by Sharon, then a general, in which he called on soldiers to disobey orders to prevent an illegal attempt to build a settlement in the West Bank. On the tape, Sharon can be heard calling it an ”immoral order”.
Back at the main gate, some young men were shouting Nazi jibes at Jewish police officers, but standing with them was an older settler who had more reason to consider his choice of words as he called out ”Gestapo”.
Don David Ovich said seven of his brothers and sisters had been murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz. ”Some compare Sharon to the Nazis. I say you can’t compare because the Nazis weren’t as bad as Sharon. The Nazis didn’t fight their own people,” he said.
To add to Ovich’s outrage, the grave of his daughter, who was shot by a Palestinian three years ago and is buried in the local graveyard, is to be dug up and her body moved.
”Just the thought of someone in uniform at my door ordering me to leave my home reminds me of how my brothers and sisters were taken away,” Ovich said.
Another settler grew agitated on the fringes of the tirade. ”He must not say those things. It is so wrong to use those words,” he said.
Jibli was too preoccupied with her packing to offer insights into why she thought she was being forced out of her home. She said it must be down to God and that she hoped he would let her return one day.
In the meantime, most of the family’s belongings will go into storage while they are housed by the government in a caravan near Jerusalem until the compensation for the loss of their home arrives.
”It is small,” she said. ”I still have five children living at home. Perhaps everything will change by tomorrow and we won’t have to go.” – Guardian Unlimited Â