Former Gaza settlers still stuck in temporary mobile homes (Feature)

By Ofira Koopmans Aug 12, 2010, 6:04 GMT

Nitzan, southern Israel - From afar, the red rooftops of the mobile home village set up in the dunes of southern Israel, some two kilometres from the Mediterranean Sea, look just like the Jewish settlements that existed in Gaza until five years ago.

But Rachel Saperstein, 69, says the site is nothing like her former settlement of Neveh Dekalim, evacuated and demolished in Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the strip.

'I hate it here. It's a slum,' says the grandmother of 12 from her armchair in her 90-square metre bungalow, which the Israeli government describes as a caravilla, because it can be raised onto a truck any time and moved elsewhere. She taps on the wall and says: 'These are not walls, this is plasterboard.'

On Sunday (August 15, 2010), Israel marks five years since its unilateral pullout from Gaza. Twenty-one Jewish settlements were uprooted. Their 1,800 families, or 8,800 people, moved to hotel rooms and temporary housing.

Five years on, the vast majority of evacuees still live in temporary caravan sites, construction of most of the permanent housing has not yet begun, and the rate of unemployment among the evacuees is about 18 per cent - double that of the general population.

The largest concentration of Gaza evacuees - more than 500 families - are still stranded in the caravilla site of Nitzan, located in between the southern Israeli coastal cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod, just over 20 kilometres north of the Gaza Strip and under 40 kilometres south of Tel Aviv,.

'The results on the ground show a severe failure that is hard to exaggerate,' former Israeli supreme court judge Eliahu Mazza told Israel's parliament only two months ago, asn he presented the results of a one-year inquiry he headed into the government's handling of the evacuees, formed after criticism mainly by the right-wing in Israel.

If uprooting 21 settlements with under 9,000 people from Gaza proved so problematic, that does not auger well for the future: Under any realistic peace treaty, Israel would have to dismantle dozens of settlements in the much larger West Bank, with tens of thousands of Jewish settlers.

The Mazza commission blamed partly bureaucracy and ill planning for the failure to deal properly and timely with the evacuees. However, it also blamed the settlers themselves, because they refused to cooperate and communicate with the government, making it harder to plan their permanent housing.

'I wouldn't sign up (for any advance relocation plan). I couldn't bear to deal with the government,' says Saperstein, expressing the view of many settlers, who felt betrayed because they previously had had the backing of the Israeli government and the nationalist Likud party.

Only months before announcing his decision to withdraw from Gaza, former Likud premier Ariel Sharon, visiting one of the Gaza settlements, declared he saw no difference between it and Tel Aviv.

So far, only 200 of the 1,800 families evacuated from Gaza have their permanent homes ready, says Laurence Beziz, 49, a settler representative in Nitzan, who emigrated to Israel from France at the age of 20 and lived for almost 20 years in the former Jewish settlement of Gadid until evacuated in 2005.

Driving around the temporary village, she points at an empty lot where the government had years ago promised to build a small shopping centre for the evacuees, The lot was indicative of the lack of infrastructure and services, she says. Even the few badly needed community centres were put out with the help of donations, she says.

But at a nearby construction site, builders work in the blazing summer heat on one of the new permanent communities - many of which will carry names reminiscent of the former Gaza settlements. Bnei Dekalim, which translates as Sons of (Neveh) Dekalim, is one example.

The budding construction is giving the evacuees some encouragement and a sense that they may soon face a new beginning. 'It can't say it's all negative,' says Beziz.

Sara Shomron, 41, a mother of seven and a religious nationalist like many of the former settlers, however, is convinced Jews will yet return to Gaza, if it is God's will.

'Until we can go back, we are here.

'I hope I'll be young enough to participate and if not that my children will because it's an integral part of the land of Israe,' she says.