Palestinians make slow progress transforming former Gaza settlements

A stranger arriving at the gates of the destroyed Gaza Strip settlements will find it hard to believe that more than two months have passed since the last Israeli soldier left. Along the roads leading to what was Gush Katif, time seems to have stood still. The settlement gates and even some of the signs are in place. The hundreds of thousands of people who flooded into the settlements and took everything of value, from shoelaces to shaving kits, are gone. It appears that earlier predictions of chaos and illicit control of the land by vested interests were wrong.

Only one place seems different - Neveh Dekalim, the former "capital" of the gush and its largest settlement. At the entrance, Abed al-Alul, 46, is working energetically to lay irrigation pipes and rake garbage near the former Gaza Coast Regional Council building. He knew every stone in Neveh Dekalim, as well as Gadid and Gan-Or, long before he was hired by the Al-Aqsa University in Khan Yunis to prepare the land here for a campus.

Al-Alul's eyes fill with tears as he describes his former employers, and asks to send them regards. "After the pullout, all the pipes I had laid beforehand were destroyed," he says.

Alongside him, Abu Mu'az, the university's administrative director, is supervising the work. "One hundred and seventy dunams have already been set aside in the western part of Neveh Dekalim," he says. "The rais [Mahmoud Abbas] still hasn't given the final approval, but we have been told it is all right and we hope to finish preparing the buildings in a few months."

From Fatah activist to settlement guard

The only other signs of life in the settlements come from two projects, the most significant work opportunities in Gaza - guarding the settlements and the hothouse project.

The first Palestinians to enter the settlements after the departure of the Israel Defense Forces on the night of September 12 were members of the Palestinian National Security Forces, posted to guard the evacuated settlements. By the middle of the month they had disappeared, except in the northern Gaza Strip, where three brigades have been deployed because of the proximity to the border with Israel.

In their stead, the Palestinian Authority brought in thousands of activists from the various armed factions in Fatah, which "retrained" them as settlement guards. This enables the PA to guard the settlements while keeping the factions dependent on Fatah so they do not move their loyalties to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

Cornerstone laid

At the entrance to Morag, the cornerstone has been laid for a new city, funded by United Arab Emirates ruler Sheikh Khalifa ibn Zaid. Some 3,500 apartments are to be built here for Arab intifada victims, and for people whose houses in nearby Rafah were destroyed.

M., a veteran intifada activist, stands at the entrance with two other activists. "Our task is to make sure no one else gets in and starts to build or take control of the land," he says. "Why don't you tell him you were bought for NIS 600 to make sure the ruins don't run off," his friend teases him. Another 150 young activists guard the ruins of Morag in two shifts of 12 hours each.

The popular army also guards the hothouses, which are operating under the supervision of the Palestinian Finance Ministry. Following the agreement between Israel, the U.S. and the PA, a Palestinian company, Pal-Trade, took charge of 3,500 dunams of hothouses. The crops - tomatos, peppers and other produce, which should be ripe by the end of the month, are headed for markets in Israel and abroad.

Most of the hothouses remained intact after the pullout, and they provide a livelihood for thousands of workers. The Israeli farmers have been replaced by "agricultural engineers in suits" as the Palestinian workers call them - Pal-Trade's senior executives.

Last week a group of workers sat in the hothouses of Netzarim and complained. The workers are supposed to get NIS 60 per day, including travel expenses of NIS 10. This amounts to about NIS 1,500 per month, as opposed to the NIS 4,000 they received when they worked for the Israelis, or that those working in Israel earn. But in any case, according to workers in most of the settlements, they have not received any pay for six weeks.

Samir al-Masri, for example, a father of 10 from Khan Yunis, worked as a welder in Or Yehuda. For the past few months the number of workers allowed into Israel has been greatly reduced, and al-Masri has been forced to stay in Gaza. "I earned NIS 300 a day as a welder, and now I work for NIS 60. We weren't paid during Ramadan nor at Id al-Fitr. Since the pullout I have been `bald on all sides.'" Al-Masri says his friends miss their Israeli employers. They vent their anger on "the suits," their new bosses. "They have nothing to worry about," he says. "They'll always get their salary on time."

The PA says there are 10 main projects that will begin in Gaza "in the coming months," including removal of rubble, rebuilding the north-south road and building a port near Netzarim, reopening the Dahaniyeh airport and building an industrial area near the former Kfar Darom.

"We thought we had a well-organized infrastructure waiting," Dr. Mahmoud Samhouri, the head economist of the withdrawal, says, "but we found large-scale ruin. The infrastructure in the settlements is no good for us. We have to think in broader terms, that the population will double itself in the next 20 years.

"We thought the hothouses were high-tech, but we discovered that is not the case," Samhouri says. "The public buildings are destroyed, there is no choice but to replan." Samhouri says planning is impossible until the rubble is removed, because according to him, 15 percent is hazardous materials. The removal, which was to be supervised and funded by Israel and carried out by Palestinian firms under UN oversight, has not started, and according to Samhouri, it will not begin any time soon.

	Gunmen from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade outside the remains of the synagogue at Kfar Darom last week.
	Photo by: Nir Kafri