October 1, 2003:
Mohammed's younger brother
Issam was seriously injured
and was taken to the hospital
about a week ago. His leg
was amputated and he is
undergoing medical treatment.

October 18, 2003:
Mohammad's younger brother,
Hussam [17 yrs old], was killed
by the Israeli army today.

Hussam was sitting at home
when he was shot in the face,
chest, back, legs. He had
nothing to do with any violent
or even political movement.

Hussam's crime is that he was
a Palestinian.

— The Webmaster

Hope or Horror?
Impending Gaza “Disengagement” Riddled With Uncertainty

http://www.washington-report.org/archives/Sept_Oct_2005/0509010.html

Washington Report, September/October 2005, pages 10-11

CONFUSION, misdirection, propaganda, misinformation and outright lying are the hallmarks of life in the Gaza Strip these days. From the 1.4 million native and refugee Palestinians in Gaza to the Israeli occupation soldiers and some 8,500 Israeli settlers, from heads of state to the humblest citizen, nobody seems sure exactly how the planned “disengagement” of Israeli forces and the evacuation of the illegal Israeli settlements will play out. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his closest advisers are saying little, while public reaction ranges from the mainstream Western media hailing the plan as a “breakthrough for peace” to extremist rabbis publicly calling down death and destruction on Sharon and his government.

The one thing that seems certain is that Sharon has staked his political future on removing all Israeli settlers from Gaza, and from four small settlements in the northern West Bank. Such vague plans as have been announced so far involve an orderly and voluntary removal, but Sharon has left little doubt that the Gaza settlements will be emptied, by force if necessary.

The settlers themselves fall into two main groups: roughly half are secular or moderately observant Jews who were attracted to the Gaza and West Bank settlements by strong financial considerations—low housing costs, tax incentives, free land, and business opportunities. The remainding settlers espouse an ultra-Orthodox theology that, they claim, insists they must physically occupy “Eretz Israel”—”Greater Israel”—and displace all the non-Jewish inhabitants. Their presence in the settlements is God’s will, they maintain, their inescapable religious duty. While their motives are religious, however, the Israeli government—whatever Labor or Likud—has supported them for political reasons.

The fervor—some would call it fanaticism—of the religious settlers has forced many of their secular neighbors into an awkward double game. Those who announced publicly that they would be happy to leave Gaza if given adequate compensation and financial assistance in starting over have been denounced as traitors, or worse, by the ultra-Orthodox. Many received death threats, were harassed or even beaten. As a result, many secular settlers have approached the Disengagement Management office secretly requesting compensation and voluntary evacuation, while in public, to preserve their safety, offering lip-service to the hard-liners. Making matters worse, the Sharon government has been painfully slow in announcing resettlement plans, and the promised compensation has yet to be paid.

Led by many outspoken rabbis in and out of the settlements, the religious settlers, are opposing the disengagement with everything from media-savvy civil disobedience, to threats of violence, and even medieval curses. For them, the end—doing God’s will by remaining in the settlements—justifies almost any means, for their enemies are not just Israel’s enemies but God’s.

Many observant modern Jews had never heard of the Pulsa d’Nora (the “Scourge of Fire”) ceremony, let alone seen it, before footage of the medieval rite recently surfaced on Israeli TV. Rooted in Kabalistic lore and ceremonial magic, the ritual calls down the most elaborate and dire curses on its target. A description of the ritual sounds like a piece of horror fiction: 20 black-robed rabbis enter an underground cave in the middle of the night, light black candles, and keep repeating after the leader the name of the one to be cursed—most recently, “Ariel Sharon.” In solemn prayers, the rabbis called upon the Destroying Angel to kill Sharon. If by chance the rabbis misjudged the situation, and their intended victim, Sharon, does not deserve death, then, they stipulate, may the Destroying Angel kill the 20 rabbis.

The extremist rabbis make no secret of the fact that the Pulsa d’Nora ritual was invoked against the late Israeli Prime Minister Itzak Rabin—and, they insist, it succeeded brilliantly. Rabin was assassinated by a fanatic young Israeli student, Yigal Amir—but, according to the rabbis, it was really the Destroying Angel at work.

Most Palestinians in Gaza can cite less arcane sources for their hardships. With the disengagement slated to begin in mid-August, the checkpoint closures have been frequent. At the closed Abu Holi checkpoint in the middle of Gaza, Jedallah Al Huat, 28, explained that he used to work at the Gush Katif settlement. There, starting at age 16, he was employed as a tailor by Israeli settler Toni Bukra, 38. When the impending disengagement was announced, Bukra offered to sell the furnishings of his clothing factory to Al Huat. They settled on a price of 300,000 shekels (roughly U.S. $7,000) for the machines, factory equipment, fabric inventory and finished clothing, which Al Huat brought to his home in Gaza. There, post-disengagement, he hopes to establish his own business.

Al Huat got to know his employer well over the years. “The settlers in Gush Katif have had a comfortable life,” he explained. “More than that, they’ve grown rich here. The first time I ever met Toni, he was riding an old black bicycle. Now he drives a 2005 model Suzuki. Toni was in a very shaky financial situation before he came to Gaza—I doubt you could call it middle-class. But he’s done very well in Gush Katif. And when he leaves,” Al Huat noted, “he’ll get lots of money for his house, his clothing factory, and for his 13 dunums of greenhouses.”

A number of sources said Bukra has signed up for voluntary evacuation and compensation, but Bukra himself denied this in a phone interview. So, then, was he being forced to leave Gaza? “I’ll have no choice,” he replied. “When the army asks me to evacuate, I will move, and I will find a good place to live.”

The Other End of the Spectrum

Bukra’s pragmatic approach is light-years away from the prevailing sentiments at the nearby Neve Dakalim settlement. There, not only the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) guarding the Israeli enclave, but many of the settlers as well, are armed, and frequently open fire at the civilian neighborhoods of Khan Younis. In January of this year, 15-year-old Ahmed Abu Mustapha was walking down the street when he was shot dead by a sniper in the settlement.

One of the Neve Dakalim residents, Rakhel Suashten, 64, began life as an American. She still speaks English with a strong American accent, and has kept her U.S. citizenship as well. She first became a settler in 1968, and moved to Neve Dakalim in 1997. “This is not a disengagement,” she declared. “I am going to be thrown out of my own house here in Gaza, forcibly removed from my neighbors and my home. I have not packed my bags. We are all praying it will not happen.”

But has she—just in case the worst does happen—signed the papers to get financial compensation? “Of course I didn’t sign!” she almost shouted. “I don’t want tainted money.” Verbally, the elderly woman is as militant as her armed neighbors. “The Palestinians are the ones who should be thrown out,” she insisted. “That’s part of our Bible—don’t you know that?”

Roughly half the settlers share Mrs. Suashten’s hard-line position, and they have support from within Israel as well. The Palestinians in Gaza are bracing themselves for a total closure of all the Gaza checkpoints and border crossings during the evacuation, partly to prevent the extremist settlers from bringing in supporters. Already the Israeli army has had to prevent thousands of anti-disengagement protesters from entering Gaza.

One of the most vocal and visible anti-disengagement groups is Moetset Yesha, funded, according to its spokeswoman, Ruti Liberman, by the Israeli government. Improbable as that claim sounds, the anti-disengagement forces are unquestionably well-organized, well-funded, and highly motivated. Dabi Rosen, spokeswoman of the Gush Katif Regional Council, is never far from her cell phone these days. “I’m on my way back to Gaza from a settlers’ demonstration against the prime minister,” she said in a phone interview.

When I asked whether she thought Sharon wanted to evacuate the Gaza settlements, she replied, “Sharon has personal problems with corruption, but we settlers are the ones paying the highest price. Of course,” she added, “the Palestinians will starve when we leave. We have been employing them in our settlements, but once we’re gone, this will be nothing but a jail for them.”

“Have you ever looked at a map of the world?” I asked her.

“I have one with me,” she replied.

“Then how did it happen,” I asked, “that Israel is sitting in the middle of 22 Arab nations here! In the Middle East?”

“The word ‘Palestinian’ doesn’t exist,” she shouted. “There are no Palestinians! All this land was given to us by God! And if you refer me to the world map, I refer you to the Scriptures!”

Despite her extreme religious views, however, Ms. Rosen hasn’t completely ignored more mundane considerations. Before we finished our conversation, she pointed out the amount of money being offered the settlers “is not enough to buy a flat in the north of Israel!”

Certainly, the extremist settlers and their supporters are stating their case in the strongest possible terms. After even brief talks with a few of them, the dilemma of the secular settlers becomes clearer. People like Dabi Rosen, many of them armed to the teeth, are living next door or down the street. When and how will those willing to evacuate declare themselves? Will they defy their neighbors and the extremist rabbis? What provision—if any—has the Israeli army made to protect them from their militant neighbors? Is Sharon, as many analysts speculate, trying to engineer an evacuation so difficult, so traumatic, so expensive, that the Europeans and Americans will accept his land-grab in the West Bank?

These are all vitally important questions for every living soul in Gaza. So far, however, no one has the answers.

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