by Toby Klein Greenwald

It was chol hamoed Pesach, and we were on our way to Shomria to meet up with our daughter Naama, her family, and her in-laws. Naama was uprooted from her home in Atzmona last August, along with her husband and three children. At the same time, her in-laws were uprooted from their home of 27 years in Ganei Tal, also in Gush Katif.

Naama and Avner wanted us all to see the community - and the caravan - where they will be making their new home.

The deeply religious community of Atzmona spent the first five weeks of grieving, following the expulsion, in the spartan dormitory rooms of Yeshivat Shaalbim. Then about 30 families relocated to Yated, on the border of Egypt, with hot sand and desert air as far as the eye can see. With them went the well known pre-army Atzmona preparatory program, where five yeshiva students were murdered by terrorists in 2002. The mechina, Atzmon, is headed by a rabbi who is also a combat pilot.

A few families scattered temporarily, and another 57 families set up the famous tent camp in an abandoned hangar on the outskirts of Netivot, in the Negev, which they called "Ir HaEmuna" - "City of Faith." They thought it would be for several weeks. It lasted eight months. Eventually most of the tents were "upgraded" to rickety old caravans. The Atzmona Talmud Torah - the educational "pearl" of Gush Katif - reopened, and uprooted Katif parents bussed their children there from their various "diaspora" caravan camps.

They lived there, in substandard conditions, until about ten days before Pesach. But they say they had it easier than their friends who were in "gilded cages" in hotels, who were given the unceremonious boot out only a few days before the holiday.

As we drove I had sorely mixed feelings. On the one hand, the first part of this road was familiar to me, but I knew that this time the journey wouldn't lead to the sand and sea of Katif. On the other hand, after a basement rental in Nof Ayalon (Naama and her husband decided to stay close to his army job in Tel Aviv, rather than live in Ir HaEmuna), I was happy my daughter and her family will soon find some peace by reuniting with their community.

Shomria

The Israeli government suggested that the Ir HaEmuna people relocate to Shomria, a kibbutz that was established in 1985 by the non-religious, Communist Hashomer Hatzair movement. Nearby are two other kibbutzim from the same movement - Dvir and Lahav, which is the home of Meretz MK Haim Oron, who was helpful to the Gush Katif people before and after the ‘Disengagement’, his opposing political views notwithstanding.

About an hour and a half from Jerusalem, on the way to Beer Sheva, there is a turn to the left and one drives until he feels he's reached the end of the world. A little beyond that is Shomria, surrounded by rolling flatlands, hills and forests in the distance. I could even see the Hebron mountains. Closer still was a barbed wire chain fence. Sitting in the front passenger seat with an open atlas, I was unable to believe my eyes. Ultimately, these people who were removed forcibly from their home in Gush Katif, with the government telling them they would now be safer, have been resettled by that government about half a kilometer away from the green line, and less than a kilometer, as the crow flies, from a hostile Arab village.

But they have gone willingly, because they are still idealists, and still believe in settling outlying areas, and perhaps also because of its beauty and isolation. It is no wonder that Shomria's original members chose this area to make the land bloom.

But their venture hadn't been easy. Shomria was trying to hold its own, but it had dwindled to thirteen families. Only six people worked on the kibbutz itself, either in agriculture or in the cow shed, according to Yigal Aflalo, head of the kibbutz secretariat. Others worked on the outside and gave a portion of their earnings to the kibbutz. Aflalo says that there were basic necessities that were not being properly provided by the government, and that in general the state was not helpful to small communities.

Immediate Compensation

Negotiations between the government and the Shomria residents dragged on for months. Eventually the members of Shomria voted to leave, with each family receiving compensation of $370,000, an amount that, according to Zevulun Kalfa of Atzmona, was "twice as much" as Atzmona people received for parallel sized families and homes. In addition, there are Atzmona evictees who, like others from Gush Katif, have still not received partial or full compensation. The Shomria people received half while they were still there, and the other half shortly after they left. They did not have to go through the draconian nit-picking of providing 20-year-old electric bills to prove their residency, as did the Katifers.

Aflalo has since moved into a caravilla on Kibbutz Dvir, where he plans to build along with eight other Shomria families. Two families have moved to Lahav and another two went privately to moshavim elsewhere.

A Partnership That Didn't Happen

The rebbetzin of Atzmona told me last autumn that, "We would be willing to live in Shomria and have the original residents stay there. They don't want to live together with us." Aflalo claimed that a representative from the Disengagement Authority told him, "I spoke with the Rav of Atzmona and he said that the Atzmona people don't want to live together with you." But in a follow-up call to the Rav of Atzmona, in light of Aflalo's comments, he said that no one at any time ever asked him if the people of Atzmona would be willing to live together with the people of Shomria.

Aflalo said that some Shomria people had expressed a fear that, "The Atzmona people would make us wear kippot, ask that we not drive or smoke on Shabbat…" When asked if he was ever told that by anyone from Atzmona, he said, "No, but…"

The original plan, noted Aflalo, was that the people of Atzmona would live there for only two years until a permanent community could be built for them elsewhere.  "The fact is," said Aflalo, "we've been living here, overlapping, for the last two months. Had we known then what it was like to live with the Atzmona people, we might have been willing to stay and live together. Having said that," he added, "after the trauma they have gone through, I believe now that what they need is to be alone, to do deep work on healing their wounds."

In a parallel vein, Rav Netanel of Atzmona called Aflalo, "A precious Jew, a tzaddik."

"My army reserve unit took part in the 'Disengagement', though I wasn't there, personally. They told the people from Atzmona, 'We're the same ones who did that; now we will help you rebuild,'" said Aflalo. "I wasn't happy about the decision to leave, but the majority decided. It was a terrible time. Not everyone felt as secure as others, couples began to argue; we felt we were falling apart as a community."

"As empathetic as I felt for the evictees before their eviction, I didn't know how it felt 'til we went through it," he said. "And in some ways I feel it was worse, because we made the decision ourselves!"

But one evictee said, when Aflalo's comment was repeated to her, "It's worse to be evicted by force by your government who has sent you there. At least they can go back and visit their former home."

Discussing the complications in moving Atzmona to Shomria, Aflalo explained, "They had a cow shed that delivered five million liters of milk a year, twice as much as ours. Those cows are waiting in Beer Tuvia. But Basi said I have to build them a cow shed, the same size that they lost. But the only available area is an ecological area where it's prohibited to build a cow shed; the only place left was our cow shed. Now, I try to look forward."

We drove through the area of the original kibbutz homes, rich with foliage. A peacock crossed our pathway, remnant of a dream of one of the original kibbutz members. We pulled into a makeshift parking area by a neighborhood of what Ariel Sharon's spin masters dubbed "caravillas", as if giving them a cool name, could make them more attractive to their inhabitants. Naama's mother-in-law, Rutie Cohen, whose sister and brother-in-law, Rachel and Dov Kol, were the last to be murdered on Tzir Kissufim before the 'Disengagement', lives with her husband in a caravilla in Yad Binyamin. Rutie told me with a bitter laugh that when someone from the Disengagement Authority came to open another door in their "caravilla", he cut open the wall with her kitchen knife. She added, "And this morning I woke up to a puddle of water on the floor of my bedroom again," thanks to the late-in-the-season rains.

Costume on Pesach

We stopped by to visit the caravan of Odeya Pachenik, who, like Rutie and others, has tried to make it home. Over the door is a sign that reads, "It is good to give thanks to God, and to sing to Your Name on High". Books and toys filled the cardboard house. 

Odeya's daughter was dressed in a bunny costume. Why a bunny costume on Pesach? "Because when it was Purim, we were still in Ir HaEmuna without our costumes, so she wants to wear it now."

Odeya showed me the tiny plant that the Disengagement Authority sent, along with a Hagadah, as a Pesach gift. All over Israel, companies and organizations give their workers or members coupons worth hundreds of shekels in order to facilitate buying food or other necessities for the holiday, but the Disengagement Authority - already sorely in arrears for compensation payments to many of the evictees - gave a Hagadah and a plant. "The Hagadah was especially painful to receive," an evictee from another yishuv told me, "because our own are still packed away in containers, thanks to the Disengagement Authority. Who thought, in August, that we would not be living at least in temporary dwellings by Pesach?"

Reconnecting

There was a hush over the community, a combination of the exquisite isolation in the wilderness, and the nature of the people. Women were dressed modestly, men were in white shirts, and children played on the narrow pathways. Fledgling plants and transplanted trees were being nurtured in the new little yards. My own grandchildren were happy to see the friends that they'll be rejoining in a few months, and they fearlessly climbed among the piles of dirt and unpaved areas. They wanted to see where their school and kindergarten will be. They were wearing T-shirts that read, "The best, best home" over a child's drawing, on the front, and "Gush Katif Forever" on the back.

My daughter reconnected with her neighbors, and, together with her husband, checked out the caravilla slated for them. They measured the tiny kitchen area, and got down to the tedious discussions of any couple moving into a new and different space. I watched her eyes. The view from her kitchen window is a beautiful landscape, and maybe that, along with the everyday business of setting up a new home and deciding what desk to buy for her first-grader, will help numb the pain a little.

The people of Atzmona try to be upbeat, rather than dwelling on what has been taken from them. A family invited us to spread out our picnic lunch of matza, potatoes and tuna on their porch table, as their tiny caravilla was full of guests. Every second word from the man of the family, a rabbi and teacher, is, "Baruch Hashem, baruch Hashem." One of the guests could not contain herself and before we left, she asked him, on the side, if he didn't feel any sense of sorrow, of anger. He became more animated. "Of course I do. Do you think it was easy for me to do bedikat hametz [check for hametz the night before Pesach] in this place? My children couldn't even bring themselves to join me. We did it alone, and I'd remember how I did it last year, in our beautiful home in Atzmona. But we have to go on now, and start living again."

Outside his home three teenaged girls whizzed by on bicycles, orange streamers between the spokes of the wheels. A tractor leveled the ground where another street will be.  Someone has saved the sign "Kerem Atzmona", from the neighborhood that was an offshoot of the original community, and it stood propped against their home. No TV antennas adorned the rooftops. No secular newspapers lay on the coffee tables.

Other visitors pile out of cars. Everyone wants to see the new location of Atzmona; everyone is wondering what this magical community will do with the new deck of cards it has been dealt.

Amatzia

We drove back the way we came, and on the way passed a loping camel caravan led by local Bedouins, entrancing in the sunset. We continue on a roundabout road to Amatzia. It is only fifteen kilometers away, but there has never been a direct road connecting the two areas, as Shomria was a Shomer Hatzair kibbutz and Amatzia is a traditional, right-wing Herut community. Such is the reality in the State of Israel today - that roads are determined not by geography, but by politics.

In Amatzia I met with Naama Zarbiv, head of the secretariat of Moshav Katif, whose members are being resettled there. She showed me the curtains she has hung in the bedrooms, anxious to live "normally". She's salvaged a piece of her old kitchen from Gush Katif and this little bit of home is like balm to her. She recounted that the original Amatzia community received them with open arms, and couldn't do enough for them. One of the Amatzia people even called her and said, "We know you're a religious community. We have a pool, and we'll happily provide you with separate days for men's and women's swimming, but tell me, do we have to change the water in between?"

Their welcome was comforting, since the Moshav Katif people were ordered to move into caravillas that weren't totally ready for them. There are still dangerous, open pits in the area. The few families who stayed behind in the guest house in Ashkelon were in dire straits, Naama said. They included a family whose mother is ill, and another whose mother gave birth to her ninth child only two weeks before Pesach. Yet, the Disengagement Authority had ordered the hotel to stop providing meals for them. Naama had to arrange food for them from her new home in Amatzia.

Like a "cut-out", one can visit, in the same day, the pastoral beauty of Shomria, and the open pits of Amatzia, and be reminded that the big picture of the Disengagement is so much more than any one frame, and will continue to haunt us for many years to come.

Toby Klein Greenwald writes reports for the Center for Near East Policy Research on the aftermath of the Disengagement (www.israelbehindthenews.com/katif.htm).