Former Settlers Still Not Settled

The basketball game at the sports arena in Jerusalem was like any other raucous gathering of 1,500 teenagers, except for one thing: many of them had not seen their friends since being expelled from their homes in the Gaza Strip last August. 

Shedding a spotlight on this scattered but not divided community, the championship game between the youth of former Gush Katif settlements Neve Dekalim and Netzer Hazani was a joyous reunion. “To see all the youth gathered together again from all over the country, it still makes my adrenaline flow,” organizer Shlomo Yulis said.

The city donated use of the sports stadium. A synagogue in Ra’anana (near Tel Aviv) provided financial support. Donations from the Institute for Hebraic Studies, a Christian organization in Houston, Texas headed by Richard Booker, paid for new uniforms and sneakers. 

The night was one small bright spot for the former settlers. More than half a year after Israel’s pullout from Gaza, the statistics are grim: 50 percent still have no work; 330 families are still living in tents or hotels; and children are enrolled in temporary schools. According to the Industry, Trade and Employment Ministry, only 470 of the evacuees have found work. 

In all, approximately 1,800 families were evacuated, a total of 8,500 people. Most of them put their belongings in storage—inaccessible containers—where they have remained since August. They spent the coldest months without their winter clothes and no money to buy some. 

Those living in government-provided mobile homes endured the winter in the small, cold quarters, and several cannot afford to pay their heating bills. “At least the hotels have hot meals and heating,” Yulis noted. When they arrived at the Jerusalem Gold Hotel, Yulis and his wife Udi were told they would spend up to two weeks there. It’s been seven months.

They are facing another expulsion from the hotel, but their housing isn’t ready and they have no money. The compensation, which they have yet to receive for their Gaza home, was estimated at 800,000 shekels ($177,000).

“Whoever had a 300-square meter house before can’t hope to get more than a 40-square meter house now. With the money they promised me, I can barely buy an apartment on the third floor,” Yulis said. “I don’t have the money to have the life here that I had there. And that’s just me—imagine those families with seven or eight kids. They live in caravans [mobile homes] now.”

Disengagement Authority head Yonatan Bassi said that each settler was offered housing solutions, but not everyone accepted them. “I believe that by this upcoming Pesach [Passover], all, or almost all of the evacuees will be out of hotels,” he said. “But people must understand, the decision to stay in hotels has largely been their decision.” 

Yulis concurs with that. His community wanted to stay together, not be assigned homes in far-flung towns. “They tell you, ‘You go there and you go there,’” he said. Many families, however, have remained together and are building their homes in small communities.

As one woman put it, “We feel like new immigrants in our own land.” 

In a recent report, state comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss blasted the government’s handling of the evacuation and resettlement of the Gaza families. Government officials were guilty of “serious failures...that compromised the handling of the evacuees and caused unnecessary suffering,” the report said.

Regardless of the politics, teenagers at the basketball game savored the few moments together. “It’s not really a happy time,” said Hila Amitai, 19. “We’re scattered all over the country now and this reminds me of what was. I simply want what we had.”