Jews in Gaza Settle In for a Fight

It was the Israeli government that encouraged Rachel Saperstein to move to this settlement, a small Jewish enclave across from a Palestinian refugee camp. Now, 7 1/2 years later, it’s the Israeli government that is ordering her to get out.

But this time, Saperstein has no intention of complying, not when it’s clear to her that an even higher power wants her to stay. Through 4 1/2 years of a Palestinian uprising, God has protected her and other Jewish settlers in Gaza from rocket-launching militants, she said, and no decision by a bunch of politicians is going to drive her from divinely appointed land.

“I’m going to be here next year, and you know why? If the good Lord had wanted us out of here, he would’ve killed enough of us to make us pack up and leave,” said Saperstein, 64, who moved here in 1997.

And if Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sends police and soldiers to evacuate Neve Dekalim and 20 other Gaza settlements in July, as is expected, “they’ll have to take me out bodily,” Saperstein declared.

Such is the determination, defiance and, some say, outright denial being expressed by many, if not most, of the Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip. The narrow swath of land abutting the inviting blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea is home to about 8,000 settlers and 1.3 million Palestinians.

Since Sharon’s Cabinet gave final approval last month to uprooting the settlements, fierce resistance to his “disengagement plan” has echoed throughout these communities -- angry mutterings of betrayal by a fellow Jew, dark comparisons to Nazi policies and faith that God will not let any of it come to pass.

Officials insist that the government is advising the settlers to accept that fact, as well as the nearly $1 billion being offered to them as compensation. The clock is ticking, officials say, until the July 20 cutoff, after which anyone who hasn’t left voluntarily will be forcibly removed.

Just how many residents will dig in their heels until the last remains to be seen. Officials have maintained a steady drumbeat of optimistic predictions that only a vociferous minority will have to be dragged out in the end.

Yet Yonatan Bassi, the government’s point man for relocating the settlers, said last week that 800 of the 1,700 families had already turned down the state’s offer of assistance. He did not specify how many of those 800 had refused to vacate their properties. So far, 63 families have agreed to move out peacefully and receive the aid packages, he said.

“Most of the people in Gush Katif are not thinking of going,” said Noga Cohen, 36, referring to the main Gaza settlement block. Cohen, her husband and eight children live in the village of Kfar Darom.

Ideological and religious opposition to the pullout is so strong among settlers and their supporters that authorities are planning for every contingency during the evacuation, including nightmarish scenarios in which holdouts lock themselves in a bunker or threaten mass suicide, the daily Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported recently.

Residents interviewed on an organized tour of the Gaza settlements said they would not resort to violence to stay on land they believe was bequeathed to the Jewish patriarchs by God. But neither will they give up without resisting.

Part of their strategy lies in acting as if nothing has changed or will change, whatever Israeli officials or the media say. Settlers against the pullout say they are doing nothing to prepare for a move: not looking for a new house outside Gaza, not checking out new schools for their children, not doing anything to imply that the specter of uprooting their households is in any way real.

“If they say to you, ‘In another five months your mother’s going to die,’ you don’t buy a grave or a shroud. You do everything possible for your mother to live,” said Chanan Wisner, 46, who lives with his wife and their 11 children in Netzarim, an isolated, deeply religious settlement in central Gaza.

In Netzarim’s community center, a storyboard of painted panels depicts Gaza as the Jews’ rightful inheritance. Even so, polls indicate that a majority of Israelis support the disengagement plan.

Settlers blame that view on what they say is a stream of disinformation being put out by the government.

“The people of Israel will wake up,” Wisner said. “They’re like a raring lion, and it will be clear that God means good to the people of Israel. We’re here to stay.”

Many residents pour scorn on Sharon’s rationale that withdrawing from Gaza will strengthen Israel’s security by creating more defendable borders. Instead, they argue, the settlements provide important buffers and outposts for the Israeli army. It was for this reason that Sharon, when he was defense minister, encouraged the enclaves’ growth and lauded their residents as heroes.

The communities are among the most heavily protected by the Israeli military, whose troops escort residents in and out, often blocking Palestinians trying to travel within the Gaza Strip. Roads specially built for settlers are their only physical connection to Israel proper.

Anita Tucker, 59, was one of the first settlers to move to Gaza, helping to establish the community of Netzer Hazani, part of Gush Katif, 29 years ago. She grows celery in a greenhouse, one of many in the Gaza settlements. Agriculture is the settlement block’s primary industry; its organically grown vegetables are exported to Europe and elsewhere.

Long before the Palestinian intifada began in September 2000, Tucker said, she lived in peace with her Arab neighbors, some of whom still work for her. She would happily continue living peacefully with them, she said, but only under the blue-and-white Israeli flag. Her stated desire for coexistence does not include remaining in Gaza under Palestinian control.

“Anyone who would be willing to stay under the authoritarian, cruel rule I’ve heard [about] from my Palestinian workers would be crazy,” Tucker said. “The state of Israel is important to me. That’s why I left the United States. I had a comfortable life there. I didn’t come here to live under Palestinian rule.”

Tucker likened the evacuation plan to the pogroms in Nazi Germany, saying she was being forced out “because I’m Jewish.” It doesn’t matter that she would be paid some compensation -- an inadequate amount, she scoffed -- or that she would be relocated elsewhere in the Jewish state.

“I’m not going to move,” she said. “I’m planting and signing contracts for next year.”

In a nod to the volatile nature of Israeli politics, she added: “Every day in the Middle East is a lifetime. Five months is a very long time.”