Settlers feel their day has come

Thousands of young people from the Jewish settlements of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip yesterday stood at dawn in the amphitheater next to the Neveh Dekalim Local Council building and sang Hatikvah, and the hymn "I believe."

It's exactly the way Independence Day prayers end in National Religious communities - the national anthem along with a kind of religious anthem, the Maimonidean principle of faith that begins "I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah."

Before they began singing, the young people had been listening to Rabbi Rafi Peretz, head of the pre-army study program at Atzmona and a reserve IAF pilot who is greatly admired by the young people of Gush Katif. He spoke of "the war we won - a war for the love of this people. Something new was born today. Now, bring on the general referendum, and we'll win that as well."

The settlers of Gush Katif sense a time of grace is upon them. Rabbis, local council heads, and especially young people speak frequently of the need to expand their door-to-door campaign.

Yoni, a teenager from Atzmona, said: "We need to speak to the public over the heads of the politicians and especially of the media, which filter our message. We proved it's possible."

Zvi Bar Hai, in charge of the door-to-door operation that visited the homes of Likud members before the referendum, stood together with his colleagues from the Yesha Council, beaming with happiness as he read the results for the south.

"Anyone who said the development towns were against us should eat his hat," he said. "In Ofakim, 70 percent were with us. In Ashdod, 65 percent, Dimona 62 percent, Netivot, 87 percent, Sderot 74 percent. If we had had a few more weeks, the results would have been even better."

The Gush Katif settlers want to further what they call the "settlement of hearts" an expression coined years ago by Rabbi Yoel Ben Nun, a leading settler activist. In this spirit, many in Gush Katif spoke yesterday of "disengaging" from Gaza: "We are actually part of the western Negev. Take a look at the map," some teenage girls from Neveh Dekalim told a foreign TV crew.

The Hevel Aza Local Council is now seeking to link Gush Katif, in the southern Gaza Strip, not only to hearts, but to the state of Israel, by means of an expanded corridor in the Kissufim area east of the Gush. No one presently takes the so-called "Two Fingers" plan seriously - on the map, Kissufim is a two-finger span from Gush Katif - but it will be presented to political circles in the near future. Gush Katif activists will begin marketing the idea to the public as well.

In recent weeks, some Gush Katif residents have been berating themselves for closing themselves off to potential new residents. In Neveh Dekalim, the largest settlement in the Gush, a selection committee has been filtering out candidates for years. The same is true for other settlements in the region, with interviews of potential new residents being long and painstaking. During the days before the referendum, a number of rabbis made a promise - if we win, we will work to open the region to a wider public. It's the old debate of quality versus quantity. In Gush Katif they have begun to understand, a little late, that in order to become a "settlement bloc" that politicians take seriously, they have to grow.

The longing for legitimacy dominated sentiment among the residents of Gush Katif before the referendum. "People went around with long faces," local council workers said yesterday.

"It was a burning humiliation," said area resident David Hoffman. "No politician or national leader got up the courage to come to us and explain the plan. They probably couldn't look us in the eye. The residents were hardly mentioned even in the disengagement document. Only the assets."

The referendum victory did nothing to blunt these feelings. They don't understand Sharon, in fact, they fear him. Ehud Olmert they almost loathe - "that man talks about our presence here like Yossi Beilin and Yossi Sarid. He's got a virus in his head" said Shilo, a young soldier.

Many residents of Atzmona went to bed yesterday at dawn after a day and a half without sleep. Children went back to their studies after weeks of coming in late and leaving early. Many adults took time off from work.

"Anyone who was part of this operation saw what spiritual energy is," said Rabbbi Yigal Kaminsky, Gush Katif's regional rabbi. "Everyone gave his spirit, his soul, his body to the struggle. When you begin to peel open the hearts, the bond between us and all of Israel is revealed in a big way."

The "settlers" are true patriots of Israel. The whole Arab world views every Israeli as a "settler." Jews should be allowed to live in Gaza, "West Bank" or any other place as Jews live in Tel-Aviv. It is all Israel.

WHY indeed did they "exclusive" themselves nearly to death rather than accommodate every Israeli citizen they possibly could who wanted to be there?

The sacrifices the Jews of Gaza have made over three decades are impressive. Amid Arab hostility and terror, they've created communities where people live normal lives and that actually export commodities to the rest of the world. The Jewish people know the Jews of Gaza are the miners' canary that warns if danger is coming close enough to kill them and they embody a sense of passion and idealism missing in Israel today. As for the Israeli leadership's notion there is a national "majority" for uprooting Jews that's evident in a national referendum, I dare them to put it to a vote. They will get trounced. There is NO support in Israel for the government's following a set of radical policies championed by the extremist 2% of the population. Besides, God has promised to never again allow the Jewish people to be uprooted from their land and He is living up to the promise, a fact that frustrates the defeatists in the Israeli government and its foreign patrons along with the enemies of the Jewish State to no end. AM ISRAEL CHAI!

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