The open wound of Gush Katif

Last Friday when Makor Rishon's photographer, Miri Tzahi, saw the photo of First Lieutenant Amihai Merhavia, who was killed in the battle of Bint Jbail, it jogged something in her journalist's memory. She thought she had seen this face before.

Tzahi, who is about publish the album, "Katif - Nine days in Av," featuring hundreds of photos of the "days of the expulsion," searched through her computer archive and found a series of photos from around four years ago, showing Merhavia during the violent evacuation of Havat Gilad (Gilad Farm) in Samaria.

Another picture shows him sprawled on the floor, his shirt pulled up and his back exposed, as Border Policemen clutch his legs and drag him.

The people of Gush Katif, much like Tzahi, were until a few weeks ago occupied by the effort to memorialize Gush Katif, but then the war came along and confused everything. It is one thing to refer to the Israel Defense Forces during normal times as the "army of expulsion" and to refer to Dan Halutz as the "chief of staff of expulsion," and it is something totally different to continue doing so in time of war.

In the past weeks, many in the Gush Katif community and the national-religious camp have had to redefine, or at least update, their relationship with the state and with the IDF, with whom they have been on bad terms for a long time. They do not hide their hope that the reconciliation will be two-sided, that the convergence plan will be reassessed, that the "we told you so" will be seen not only as a political gripe, but also pertinent to the heart of the matter, and that level of empathy for them will again rise.

There is more to the story about Amihai Merhavia. Around a year after the violent clash in Havat Gilad, when he enlisted in the army, he spared no effort to get into the Golani brigade's elite battalion 51, and was distinguished as an outstanding soldier in the battalion.

The disengagement broke his heart, but he continued to serve. The closer the date of the disengagement grew, the greater his distress became. In the end he wrote a sharp and painful personal letter to the chief of staff in which he expressed understanding for the motives of officers and soldiers refusing to take part in the evacuation. The IDF responded with a one-year suspension.

After two months of pressure, from his commanders as well, he was returned to his command and continued his service until his death last Wednesday in Bint Jbail.

The biography of the deputy battalion commander from Eli who was felled in the same battle in Bint Jbail, Major Roi Klein, can also illustrate the complex nature of the relationship between the national-religious public and the State of Israel. During the battle, Klein, 31, the father of two small children, jumped on a live grenade and gave his life in order to prevent injury to his comrades.

He lived in the Hayovel neighborhood of Eli, which the state defines as "an outpost." His home, like other homes in the neighborhood faces a pending Civil Administration demolition order. Implementation of such a demolition order, prompted the harsh events in Amona this past February, which left deep scars on the settlers. Many of them to this day view the police almost as the enemy.

The question remains whether now, after the fall of Klein, who lived in a neighborhood whose construction was coordinated at least with some military and government officials and was even financed by the state, the law will take its course and the homes will be demolished or perhaps some kind of big reconciliation package will be arranged, which will include Givat Hayovel.

The bitterness that characterized the relationship between the state and the national-religious public in the year following the disengagement surfaced last week during the prime minister's visit to Nitzan, at the height of the fighting up North. Olmert came there with a considerable goodwill, in an attempt to help resolve problems, but one unsuccessful comment from him riled the representatives of the former communities.

The prime minister told of a conversation he had with the parents of the pilot who was killed some 10 days ago. "We did not send their son," Olmert said, "to settle the land. He did not return with compensation, he just returned in a coffin ... sometimes a government has the responsibility and the authority to make decisions that cut short a life, not just cut short a job, that not only determine whether there will be a house here or there, not only whether there will be compensation of this kind or another, whether there will ten dunams or 15 dunams, but also whether you will be in a coffin."

Olmert apparently could have found a slightly better way to convey to the expellees the relativity of their tragedy in time of war, but this incident, which in normal times would have presumably made a juicy headline, only illustrates the loaded feelings that lodge in stomachs on both sides of this disagreement a year later.

Another characteristic of the relationship between the state, and "the settlers" and "the right wing" that is especially noticeable at this time, is the dozens of articles in recent weeks saying "we told you so."

This wave began with the start of Qassam launches in the South and intensified when the war broke out in the North. These articles have a dual purpose. First, to reprimand the left for the past: Unilateral moves in both Gaza and Lebanon are what led to the uncontrolled terrorism. Second, there is also a warning: "The convergence plan," another unilateral idea, will prompt an even worse wave of terrorism than its predecessors.

The sharpest of these articles appeared in last Friday's Hatzofe and was written by its editor, Natan Ginat. He prefaced his article with a brief quote from the biblical story of the sale of Joseph in Genesis: "And when they saw him afar, even before he came near to them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another, behold this dreamer comes."

Ginat wrote, among other things: "When you came to uproot us from our home in Gush Katif, after over 30 years of settlement and having been dispatched by the state ...we told you so: you got confused. We are lovers. Not enemies... we told you that the enemies are just waiting to see how one Jew expels another Jew, but you did not listen to us. "

He goes on to say: "We pleaded with you to listen, to give us a chance, to exercise logic, to learn from history, to look one step ahead. And you did not want to listen. You, after all, know everything. You did not let us get close to you."

There are also those who think the "we told you so" is premature. Mordechai Karpel, the editor of Nekuda and one of the most important thinkers of the religious right, feels there is no chance that the "shapers of public opinion in Israel will really be moved by what is happening now." "Admitting the failure of the peace process and of the disengagement plan," Karpel says, "is not only an admission of the failure of a diplomatic, political and security worldview. The policy of peace, concessions and capitulation, came" he says, "from a much deeper place: from the obsessive need for recognition from the nations of the world of our very existence and for their approval; and from the desire for a safe haven and peace as the only goal that is conceivable; from focusing in particular on the here and now at the expense of the broad national and historical perspective and also from tremendous fatigue."

"The real significance of admitting political failure," Karpel feels, "is recognizing the failure of the contemporary Israeli consciousness and the worldview of historical Zionism - and that is already a completely different story. The current Israeli consciousness is incapable of enduring another 100 years of struggle and fighting for existence, because it is incapable of imbuing such a struggle with meaning, a solution and reason. In order to endure such a challenge, an alternative Jewish ideological infrastructure is needed, and not just Zionism. Such a revolution of consciousness is much more complicated, moreover such an ideological alternative has yet to be proposed in a fully crystallized and developed form, so that the Jewish majority is likely to understand and temporarily internalize the 'we told you so'; there really is no serious alternative to choose from."

Former residents of Gush Katif marked the anniversary of their expulsion yesterday with a series of ceremonies, films, discussions and dialogues at Jerusalem's Binyanei Ha'uma Convention Center. Beyond the anger, pain and memories, which were given political and artistic expression, there are now buds appearing of a new spirit, primarily among the youth, of the trend to return.

It is still hard to estimate how much weight it will have among the expellees, who are up to their necks in existential problems related to livelihood, where to live and health issues, but it cannot be ignored. The fact that at least formally "Sefer Hakisufim" - the Torah scroll written over the past year and whose mantel has the names of the communities of Gush Katif and northern Samaria embroidered on it - was placed only "temporarily"

at the Western Wall until "the return," is representative of this trend. The adults are slightly more careful. Sometimes it seems as if the statement "we will yet return to Gush Katif" was intended to absolve them of their obligation to profess loyalty to "the real home." The youth who were born in Gush Katif and who had never known any other home talk about it much more seriously. It is enough to look at the song and composition contest for youth launched by the Katif-net Web site to understand how strong is the youth's yearning to return to the Gush.

In addition to the calls to establish a fast day in perpetuity and to compose elegies about "the expulsion" to be recited tomorrow, the fast of Tisha B'Av, and every year thereafter on that date, public figures such as Elyakim Haetzni are trying to coin slogans along the lines of "We will return to every community" (Nashuv Lekol Yishuv), and the expellees themselves are repeatedly making comparisons to the 19-year wait until the return to Gush Etzion and the wait has now begun for the return to Gush Katif.

Educator Yonah Goodman, who accompanied the expellees, and especially the youth, during their most difficult days, also used one opportunity to send a message to the evacuees of Gush Katif: "Hold on to your telephone books."

But Goodman, unlike the "we told you so" people, does not feel now is the time to reprimand the left for its mistakes.

"The tendency is obvious, but the approach is twisted," he says and suggests at this time reinforcing the unifying factors and leaving the lessons to be learned for the days after the war.

Moti Sender, of the former community of Ganei Tal, who founded and still runs the Katif-net site, has in recent months changed the site from a news site to one to memorialize the Gush. Every uprooted family received an access code that enables it to upload its recollections. In this way what Sender calls an "eternal Gush Katif forest" is being created, and it already has thousands of photos and albums.

Sender also suggests that surfers buy a testimonial tree and plant, virtually, in one of the Gush communities. The response to Sender's initiative has been substantial, which perhaps proves that the former residents of the Gush are starting to come to terms with the fact that it is a memory of the past.

Sender advises against clinging to the possibility of returning to Gush Katif. "It's unrealistic," he says, "it's like some Chabad followers who today insist that the Rebbe is still alive."

Zec 12:6 In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf; and they shall devour all the people round about, on the right hand and on the left: and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even in Jerusalem.

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“Nobody can say this land does not belong to us. Our fathers were here. They bought this land,” Mr. Shtul said, speaking Biblically. “David bought Shem, and that is Jerusalem. Joseph bought Nablus. Abraham bought Hebron when he wanted to bring Sarah to this place. When Jacob had his dream about the angels on the ladders, it was in Bet El, very near here."

"Shilo [just down the road] was the Jewish capital for 369 years, much longer than Washington. No one can say that we came out here and took a land that did not belong to us. Our history is here, more than Tel Aviv.”

Sitting Shiva in Eli With the Defiant Family Of Lt. Amihai Merhavia

I agree. It is no secret that this is Jewish land and alwys has been. The entire ME and most of North Africa were Christian/Jewish until the Muslim scourge infected the area. The death cult of the pedophile "prophet" has contributed ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the world, culture, science, etc. Time for Islam to resign from the land of the living.

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