Bulldozers demolish homes, but memories linger for Palestinians
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Date: 08-19-05
By Dion Nissenbaum
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip - Israeli bulldozers began razing vacant Jewish homes in the Gaza Strip on Friday, but the moment offered little vindication for Samir Abu Alanain, a Palestinian who lived outside the walls of an evacuated Jewish settlement.
Standing outside the bullet-riddled apartment building that he and his family abandoned last year after a similar Israeli bulldozer knocked down its walls in a security operation, Abu Alanain found no joy in seeing the Israeli army's D-9s turned on Jewish homes.
"There is no justice between us and the settlers," Abu Alanain said with disgust as he looked at the concrete walls of the now-vacant Israeli settlement of Rafiah Yam. "They only demolished their houses after they received compensation and settled in other places."
As hard as it is for Israel to shutter all its Gaza Strip settlements, erasing the scars of 38 years of occupation by the Israeli army could prove to be much more difficult.
Across the Gaza Strip, it's rare to find anyone among the 1.3 million Palestinians who doesn't have a tragic or humiliating story of life under Israeli occupation. Brothers killed. Homes demolished. Hours spent sitting at checkpoints.
The 8,500 Israelis who tried to build a life in the occupied land have their own tales to tell. Ambushes. Nightly gunfire. Thousands of mortar and rocket attacks.
All that is destined for history when Israel completes its rapidly moving plans to shut the 21 Gaza Strip settlements, raze most of the buildings, dismantle its military outposts and transfer the land to the Palestinian government as soon as next month.
But the memories won't fade so quickly, especially in the Palestinian communities that have lived uneasily next to the settlements for decades.
Machine-gun fire rattled through the air Friday afternoon in the Khan Younis refugee camp as oblivious children climbed up chunks of concrete and rebar, all that was left of a row of apartment buildings that had looked out on the Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim.
The gunfire from a nearby tank - meant to scare away boys playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Israelis - barely halted a volleyball game nearby.
Harbiya Ali Abu Nemer peered out the front door of her half-demolished home and wondered when she would feel the change taking place.
"As long as it's like this, there's no hope," said the grandmother, who put her age at 75 or 80. "Hope is in the face of God."
The task of restoring hope for Gaza residents such as Abu Nemer and Abu Alanain will fall to the Palestinian government, which will have to move quickly to instill a sense of optimism in the depressed region.
On Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas led a celebration at the crippled Gaza Strip airport, a crucial link to the outside world that remains a point of contention in talks with Israel over how to jump-start the local economy. Israel is concerned about the security of aircraft flying in and out of Gaza and hasn't yet agreed on terms to reopen the airport.
Abbas vowed to rebuild the airport and homes for hundreds of families who lost theirs to Israeli bulldozers.
Nigel Roberts, the World Bank director for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said Palestinians and Israelis must recognize that it was in both their interests to create a viable state in the Gaza Strip.
"Israel does not need an impoverished, bitter and angry neighbor," Roberts said. "Prosperity does not guarantee peace, but ... impoverishment guarantees violence."
On the third day of its forced evacuation of Israeli holdouts in the Gaza Strip, Israel cleared the settlement of Gadid before halting work for the Jewish Sabbath. Next week, the army will move in on the four remaining Gaza Strip settlements and four in the northern West Bank.
At the airport, Abbas called the Israeli pullout the result of Palestinian patience and sacrifice, without mentioning the repeated Palestinian attacks on Israel and on Jewish settlers. Earlier in the day, Abbas took part in Friday prayers at his Gaza Strip compound, where the imam called the pullout the first step in creating a Palestinian state.
"Yesterday, Gaza and the northern West Bank," the imam told hundreds of men sitting on thin mats in the sweltering afternoon heat. "Tomorrow, the rest of the territories, so we can raise the Palestinian flag on the hills of Palestine."
Martin Merzer of The Miami Herald contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
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