Some Gaza Settlers Trapped in Purgatory
AP
Date: 04-25-05
By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip - When Meir Rottenstein publicly came out in favor of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last year, he became an instant pariah.
Fliers appeared branding him a sellout, his children were harassed at school and business at his electronics store evaporated.
"I don't have many friends here now," he said.
Rottenstein is one of a small group of Gaza settlers trapped in a painful purgatory. Outspoken backers of the pullout, they have been ostracized by their close-knit community but forced to remain here as they wait for the government compensation they need to move.
"I supported the government publicly," Rottenstein said. Now he feels abandoned.
Officials in charge of compensation say they are sympathetic to those who want to leave, but they could not begin work until parliament passed the state budget on March 29.
Since then, they established a committee to look at their claims and paid "a few," said Haim Altman, spokesman for the agency in charge of compensation and relocation of the settlers. Altman says the process was further slowed because many settlers hired lawyers to handle their claims.
Though polls show most Israelis support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements this summer, many of those in the Gush Katif settlement enclave in southern Gaza strongly oppose the withdrawal.
Protest banners fly over every community here. Most car windows are decorated with orange protest flags, and children frolicking on playgrounds here wear T-shirts covered in slogans demanding the plan be scrapped.
With the pullout date approaching, some of the 8,500 settlers in Gaza's 21 settlements are beginning to quietly resign themselves to the likelihood they will be forced to leave. But few are willing to talk publicly about their feelings, especially after witnessing the fate of people like Rottenstein and Avishai Nativ.
Nativ, a 50-year-old secular Jew, moved to Gaza 14 years ago to take advantage of the cheap housing. When he expressed his willingness to leave soon after Sharon proposed the pullout last year, his makeshift pizza parlor in the Rafiah Yam settlement overlooking the Palestinian town of Rafah was hit with a crippling boycott.
He still sells a few pizzas to soldiers stationed nearby but is struggling under such deep debt that he had to borrow money from his 20-year-old son, who is doing his mandatory army service.
If the government called him now to give him his check, "within 24 hours, I wouldn't be here," he said.
The settlers denied organizing any boycotts but claimed the dissidents publicly accused them of protesting against the pullout only as a pressure tactic to get more compensation.
"There is not any boycott," said Eran Sternberg, a spokesman for the Gaza settlers. However, "a normal person won't go to buy in a store from someone who tells the whole nation that he is corrupt."
Rottenstein, 42, moved to the Neve Dekalim settlement in 1983 with his parents, who had visited and thought it was pleasant. The family had previously lived in the Sinai settlement of Yamit and deeply opposed Israel's decision to evacuate that community in 1982 when it returned the Sinai to Egypt under a peace deal.
The location of the settlement never seemed to matter until the latest Palestinian uprising broke out in September 2000. Palestinian snipers began shooting at the settlers' cars on the road leading to the settlements. Other militants pounded the settlers' houses with mortars and homemade rockets.
Rottenstein's five children were terrified. Relatives stopped coming to visit. Even the washing machine repairman wouldn't come.
Rottenstein had had enough.
"I do not want to live in the war or the terror. I don't want to die ? or have my kids killed ? in a shooting," he said.
He kept his opinions to himself, but after Sharon unveiled his plan, he began expressing his feelings to some of his friends.
Unlike many other religious settlers here, he did not believe Gaza was promised to the Jews in the Bible. He also felt a withdrawal would alleviate some of the international pressure on Israel and give the Palestinians a chance to prove whether they had the will, or the ability, to govern the territory.
Word spread quickly, and soon fliers were posted all over the community branding him a traitor. One of his sons was mocked as a "leftist" at school and chased by children throwing water balloons. Another was harassed so badly he didn't go to school for a month and a half, Rottenstein said. No one called to check why.
Business in his shop withered and he was forced to close it last year. He can't pay his mortgage, his health insurance and his electric bill.
While he waits for his compensation check, he is relying on donations: groceries sent by one sympathetic Israeli, some money from a few others.
Rottenstein opened the store this week for the first time this year, hoping that the ill will against him had dissipated as the withdrawal date nears and banking that the residents' need for new goods before the Passover holiday would outweigh their hatred of him.
A few wandered into his tiny store, asking him to repair an electric kettle or looking for a new pot. Some looked around nervously, took no more than a step or two in and then quickly walked away.
Rottenstein struggled to be courteous, hoping his nightmare would soon end and he could get started on his new life outside of Gaza.
He has already started packing up his home, he said, "so when I get the money, I can go fast."
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