'This is really not what we hoped for' - Haaretz

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Thu., January 31, 2008 Shvat 24, 5768

Israel Time: 21:37 (EST+7)

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'This is really not what we hoped for'

By Daniel Ben Simon

Tags: Gaza Strip

Nahum Yosefi remembers that even back then, immediately after he and his friends began settling the new site, 25 years ago, his heart was filled with foreboding. Moshav Netiv Ha'asara, the cooperative farming village that was their new home, was supposed to alleviate the pain of being uprooted from the settlement area of Northern Sinai, which Israel had evacuated in the wake of the peace treaty with Egypt. He remembers vividly how the group debated about where to settle: adjacent to the border with the Gaza Strip or in a new community on the Palmahim coast. The spirit of adventure won out, and they decided in favor of a site that was a stone's throw from the Gaza border. Just a few dozen meters separated the new moshav of evacuees from their Palestinian neighbors. "People said it would be a paradise," he recalls. "We had a great dream."

They dreamed of a transit station that would lie on the border between two countries, Israel and Palestine. At the site would be a joint medical center, to which people would flock from Gaza, from southern Israel and from the greater Arab world in order to receive advanced treatment. Alongside the medical center, a commercial complex would be established at the border crossing between Netiv Ha'asara and Gaza, which would employ Israelis and Palestinians and bring prosperity to both nations.

"You won't believe this," Yosefi says, getting carried away, "but we also had a dream of creating a large lake, on which boats would sail. We even drew up a plan for the lake." But then the first intifada erupted, and some years later, the second intifada. The moshav's members dug in and built fences and a wall and locked themselves in from every side, for fear that the neighbors - the same neighbors they had wanted to sail on the artificial lake with - would make an uninvited nocturnal visit.

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Until two and a half years ago, there were Jewish settlements between them and their Palestinian neighbors. But along with the evacuation of the Gush Katif settlement zone, the northern Gaza settlements of Dugit, Nisanit and Eli Sinai were also dismantled. The residents of Netiv Ha'asara watched from their homes as the bulldozers demolished houses and left behind heaps of rubble.

Nahum Yosefi, former dreamer, looks at the concrete wall that surrounds the moshav. "In retrospect, we made a big mistake," he says. "Even though the moshav is beautiful, the dream my friends and I had turned into a nightmare. If I'm afraid to let my grandson walk along the path next to my house, what more is there to say?" For Yosefi, today, "the only answer is force - we know the Arabs."

Despite the gloom that has descended on its residents in the past few years, most of the founding families of Netiv Ha'asara are still here, along with dozens of new families. By 10 A.M. this past Monday, no explosions had been heard yet, no whistling of Qassam rockets, no mortar blasts. The night before, Israel had closed the passages to the Gaza Strip, and for the Palestinians who live in the world's biggest prison, a day of want and a night of blackout lay in wait.

The Karni and Erez crossing points are closed. With a cup of Turkish coffee in her hand, Ofra Eviatar, another resident of Netiv Ha'asara, steps out to the area next to the entrance to her home. "At first it was really terrific," she says. "After all, what did I want? A quiet place to raise the children and to live in peace with our Palestinian neighbors. I remember that even before the second intifada, the Palestinian neighbors came here and worked for us. I knew them and they were wonderful, every one of them."

Ofra's dream of coexistence was shattered even before the latest round of escalation. Immediately after the disengagement from Gaza, when the Palestinians climbed the ruins of Nisanit, she recalls, "They stood there and looked at our homes. That was really scary."

In the past few days and weeks, the residents of Netiv Ha'asara have felt as if they are living in a battlefield. The volleys of screaming rockets mix with the insistent whirring of the attack helicopters sent in to eliminate the squads firing the rockets. The media has focused largely on the town of Sderot, but the dozens of communities in the "Gaza envelope" have also come under relentless attack.

In time, Eviatar reached the conclusion that "what screwed everything up is the Muslim mentality of blood revenge. We speak in the language of democracy and they are not capable of understanding us. The Jews want to live and have a good life, but the Muslims want to hurt us in order to ruin our life."

Even the psychologists fled

Thirty years ago, Sylvia Zeitoun Morgenstern realized a dream. She married a young Frenchman, and after the wedding, the young couple packed their bags and emigrated from France to Israel. They settled in a farming moshav five minutes from Sderot, and Sylvia worked as an educational psychologist in the town's psychological services unit. When Sderot found itself in a war, Sylvia found herself up to her neck in treating fear-stricken residents. Thousands fled the Qassam rockets, among them most of the employees of her unit. Of the seven active members of the unit, only Sylvia and one other psychologist, who works half-time, remain.

"I think there was a certain joie de vivre in the city, but never a sense of well-being," she said this week, on one of the few days in which no rockets slammed into the city. "It is very difficult to absorb a massive immigration wave and maintain a sense of internal balance. The immigration wave from Ethiopia was very difficult because of the large cultural differences. And then came the immigrants from Asian Russia. It is not only a crisis of racism, but also one of disturbing the city's internal equilibrium."

Now the crises of immigration, distance and poverty have been compounded by the crisis of the rockets. "There were always warm people who behaved generously. That is finished. You can still find a bit of joie de vivre among the youngsters, but not in the parents. They live on the brink of despair. There is terrible fear among the parents."

In treating panic attacks, she noticed a reversal of roles taking place in the family unit. The parents were the first to crack, and it was their children who pulled them through. "They came to our offices and calmed the parents as though they were the adults."

Recently she too had enough, and she returned to France in an effort to reclaim her previous life. Then she retraced the route back to Israel, hoping to restore the dream of her first move to the country. Now she lives in the center of the country and travels to Sderot three times a week. Women she treats relate that their lives revolve around the rocket sirens, which they anticipate with dread: "They don't sleep at night because they are so tense, and that drives them crazy," Sylvia says. "When the siren finally sounds, some of them feel relief."

'A question mark over everything'

Kibbutz Nahal Oz greeted the withdrawal from Gaza with a sigh of relief. Kibbutz members were certain that now, after the Palestinians had been liberated from the yoke of Israeli rule, tranquility would come and with it an economic boom. But since the disengagement, the kibbutz has been turned into a military fortress. The army built a large base at the very entrance to the kibbutz, as the departure point for forces entering the Gaza Strip. Residents have grown accustomed to the army's presence and have the feeling that it will be some time before it disappears.

"This is really not what we hoped for," Hanna Ron, a veteran kibbutz resident, says as she leaves the dining hall for her reinforced apartment, where she can take shelter when the alarm goes off. "What hurts me most is that my family does not come to visit," she says. She has shelved the dream of peace and coexistence. "You can't imagine how many plans we had," she recalls. "We planned to set up a joint economic-industrial center with the residents of Gaza. We are the closest ones to Gaza, but instead of that center, we have tanks and other weapons of war at the entrance to the kibbutz."

Of her Palestinian neighbors she says: "I no longer have faith that something can be done together with them. We live well in the kibbutz, and it's a pity that there is something that is weighing on our lives and placing a question mark over everything. I truly feel for the people in Sderot. Here, every home is reinforced, but they have hardly anything. That's really terrible."

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