Former Gaza farmers rallied on Sunday to demand that the government fully reimburse them for the land and money that they lost when they were evacuated from their homes two years ago.

Saying the government has failed to keep promises to fully compensating them for the loss of their farms, hundreds of protesters gathered outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office in Jerusalem.

Olmert, they said, should wake up and focus on his own people instead of the Palestinian terrorists. Some demanded his resignation. They called on the government to help them rebuild their homes and livelihoods.

According to the May State Comptroller's Report, some NIS 2.3 billion has been paid in personal compensation to the 8,800 people who were forced to leave their homes in the Gaza Strip and four northern Samaria communities in August 2005.

But the evacuees said this was not enough to replace their losses, and that this was particularly true of the farmers, of whom only 10 percent have returned to work.

Those who have rebuilt their nurseries have done so with their own resources, they said.

"The government is acting inhumanely toward the residents of Gush Katif," said MK Zevulun Orlev (National Union-National Religious Party), who marched alongside the protesters.

"Just as the government enacted a new law to allow for the disengagement, they should pass a new law to help these people now. They are only refusing to do so for political reasons, but I am working very hard on their behalf."

"We are only trying to get back what is rightfully ours and what we deserve," said Aharon Hazut, one of the event's organizers, and a former resident of Gan-Or.

"But the government is sleeping. They don't care about us and they don't give us answers," he said.

About 400 of the Gaza families owned plots of land. Their lifestyles, like those of their neighbors, were severely affected by the evacuation and the loss of the income from that land.

Now that two years have passed and many of the evacuees lack jobs and permanent homes, it has become apparent that the government did not fulfill its promises, the evacuees said.

"Everything that they told us was a lie," said Yaakov Bar-Shalom, formerly of Ganei Tal.

Bar-Shalom has started growing his geraniums once more, in Ashkelon, but since his temporary home in Yad Binyamin is far from Ashkelon, it is difficult for him to monitor their progress. He is not turning a profit, because he has only half the land and plants that he did when he lived in Gaza.

Many protesters expressed anger at the government for only partially compensating them.

"I only got 60 percent of the value of my hot houses, and it took a very long time to get that money because of the bureaucracy," said Aviva Cohen, who used to live in Gadid.

Cohen now lives in Nitzan, one of the places being used as a temporary refugee camp.

"I used to grow green vegetables, but now I can't because the land that I was given is not good and I am not allowed to build on it," said Cohen.

The crowd was addressed by Orlev, as well as by representatives from different areas in Gaza.

"We will succeed in this struggle," Orlev assured the participants. "We are fighting back and we will not be ignored."

The protesters wore white shirts adorned by green letters identifying them as farmers from Gush Katif.

Many held signs appealing to the government to return "our sustenance, our respect and our homes."

The protesters chanted, "There was no solution provided for any resident," in a mocking echo of the government's original pledge in 2005 that there would be a solution provided for everyone involved in the evacuation.

The demonstrators have erected a tent where they plan to have representatives rallying continuously over the next few days, until Tisha Be'av next week.

Gush Katif: "Just Give Back What You Took From Us!"

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com)

View More Arutz Sheva TV

Arutz-7's daily Hebrew newsmagazine was broadcast on Monday from the Gush Katif farmers' protest tent outside the Prime Minister's Office. The farmers are demanding that the government merely give back the thriving farming businesses it took from them.

First to be interviewed was Eliezer Yaakov, formerly of the now-destroyed Gush Katif community Gan-Or. "I was a farmer in Gush Katif for 22 years," he said, "with 17 dunams (4.2 acres) of greenhouses, growing tomatoes for both domestic use and export, as well as organic Chilean peppers - the only one of its type in Israel."

Yaakov explained the purpose of the demonstration, which began on Sunday: "We were promised that there was a 'solution for every settler' and that by the end of 2005, we would have plots and farms... Today, two years later, 80% of the farmers aren't working; they have received no land and are sitting at home eating up their compensation money."

Yaakov said that an outside consultant, "someone who has been employed in the past by the government, proved to the highest government officials that the farmers of Gush Katif actually received only a small percentage of what they should have received."

Interviewer Uzi Baruch noted that according to a government official who appeared at a recent Knesset committee session on the topic, the residents are themselves responsible for the delay because they haven't yet decided what they wanted, etc. Yaakov responded, "The only thing the government is very good at is making media spins. It's very easy to blame the victim... Do you realize that because of totally irrelevant considerations, more than 50% of the farmers are not eligible to receive land, according to government standards? So of course the people have nothing to do. Without land, they can't build hothouses, which might help them return some of what is called the value of the hothouses. But without being able to build, we're left with what they're giving us - only 39% of the value of the hothouses."

"In addition, only two out of 26 communities have been able to sign agreements with the government - this means that they simply have no idea where they will be living; this is a very grave situation."

Yaakov, who lives in Nitzan, north of Ashkelon, where the largest gathering of expelled families reside in temporary housing, said that he personally is able to work, "because I once had experience working in something else, and so I can do that. But it pains me to see my friends, who know only agriculture and who are now simply unable to get back to work. And the government is not doing a thing to solve this problem."

Welcomes the Visitors
Yaakov said he was glad that Cabinet Ministers Eli Yishai and Tzipi Livni had come to visit: "In my opinion, the ministers were a bit naive, as they thought that the government clerks were solving the problems - but this was not the case. I hope that those MKs and ministers who sincerely care will now be able to hear us, learn the problems from up close, and do what has to be done in order to solve them."

Other government visitors to the protest tent have included MKs Ruby Rivlin (Likud), Zevulun Orlev (NRP), Nissan Slomiansky (NRP), and others. The chairman of the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council, Pinchas Wallerstein, and his top staff were also on hand.

20% are Working - on Borrowed Money
The Chairman of the Task Force of Gush Katif Farmers - Aharon Hazut, also formerly of Gan-Or - explained that the 20% of the farmers who are now working are those who took money from elsewhere to build businesses: "I am very concerned for them, for if the compensation system does not improve, they might also collapse."

Hazut explained the farmers' basic demand of the government: "You took away our hothouses, give them back. If you think that the money you're giving us is enough to rebuild our farms, then go ahead - keep the money and build the farms yourselves, with all the infrastructures, etc., and we’ll take over from there. But the fact is that the compensation they're giving is simply not enough to rebuild a business - and a Finance Ministry clerk even said that we should borrow the rest from the banks... They take from us, and then they throw us to the dogs, telling us to get along on our own... They are simply stealing from us! As much as we objected to the expulsion, we were at least confident that since this is a country founded upon values and ethics, they would return to us whatever they took. But this has not been true."

"In addition," Hazut said, "whatever they give us, they take back 5% in taxes, and then we also pay 3% for the lawyers and 1.5% for adjustors. So even the little they're giving us, only 90% of it reaches us..."

Aliyah Dreams Realized - and Shattered
Another disappointed Gush Katif farmer, Mrs. Laurence Bazize, made Aliyah from France; she and her husband built a successful farming enterprise in Gadid, where for 19 years they grew tomatoes and peppers for export and domestic consumption. "In addition to being a successful business," she said, "it allowed us to fulfill the ideological dreams we had when we made Aliyah, to build the Land and the like. In the past two years, however, we have been sent from one committee to another, told to bring all sorts of documentation and proof - and now, two years later, we still have not received an invitation for a hearing from the Disengagement Authority."

"In the meantime," she said, "we have received an advance payment, which was enough to buy a piece of land near Zikim, south of Ashkelon - but we don't have the money to start preparing the area with hothouses, infrastructures, and the like. Not only that, but we have heard from others who have started there that there are many problems, in terms of topography, frost, drainage, and infrastructures, etc."

MK Elkin Gives the Gov't One Year
MK Ze'ev Elkin (Kadima) has proposed legislation that will require the government to speed up the process and complete all preparations for permanent housing within a year. He proposed the bill, Elkin explained, "in light of the government forecast that at this rate, 75% of the expellees will move into their new homes within 2.5 years from now, or 4.5 years from the expulsion. This is of course unacceptable."

Elkin's bill was jointly sponsored with MKs Yuli Edelstein, Zevulun Orlev, Amira Dotan and others, and is supported by no fewer than 65 Knesset Members.

"The bill states that all development and infrastructures work must be completed within a year," Elkin explained, "leaving only the construction of the actual house... We want to repeat what happened here during the great Aliyah from Russia in the 90's, when the government cut housing time in half by removing much of the bureaucracy and need for permits, etc. ... I hope the government will understand the significance of the fact that 65 MKs support this bill, representing the majority of the Zionist parties, and will realize that it should not impede the passage of this bill."

Remembering the Expulsion on its Second Anniversary
Official Gush Katif expulsion commemorations will be held this coming July 25, the day after the Fast of Tisha B'Av. The day will begin at Kisufim, the nearest Jewish town to the former entrance to Gush Katif, and will continue in Netivot with Torah classes, panel discussions, personal memories of the Gush, an exhibit, plays and films. A prayer service will be held at the gravesite compound of the Baba Sali, from where the participants will set out for Sderot, where they will deposit a new Torah Scroll for "safekeeping" until the ultimate anticipated return to Gush Katif.

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