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Israelis gather next to a fire as part of a an evening prayer protesting against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan in Netivot, Israel Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2005. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet gave final approval earlier in the week to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
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| February 24, 2005 |
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Hawkish settlers are considering moving into dovish Israeli collective farms to the benefit of both sides -- a strange byproduct of a plan to evacuate 9,000 settlers from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank in the summer.
Small groups of settlers are looking seriously at "kibbutz" collective farming villages as a way to recreate their communal lifestyle. The kibbutz villages are in financial difficulties and need the settlers' cash. The dual needs might overcome a yawning ideological gap.
"The (political) right is strengthening the left," said Yaakov Rosenblatt, a resident Homesh in the West Bank, one of the settlements set for evacuation.
Under the "disengagement" plan approved by the parliament and Cabinet in recent days, all 21 Gaza settlements with 8,500 settlers and four in the West Bank with 500 settlers are to be dismantled.
Many settlers are political hard-liners, dedicated to developing the West Bank as part of Israel, while most kibbutz members adhere to a dovish line that means getting out of the West Bank and removing most, if not all the 170 settlements there.
The ideological gap between the settlers and their potential hosts came to the surface again this week.
Extreme nationalists among the settlers announced that 10,000 soldiers have signed their petitions declaring they would disobey orders to evacuate settlers.
In response, the Kibbutz Movement cobbled together 10,000 people to volunteer to replace the rebels.
But fiscal and social realities might override the ideological gaps.
Thirty families from Homesh who want to move as a group don't rule out the kibbutz as the perfect place to transfer their village lifestyle. Rosenblatt, a hard-liner, inspected two nearby kibbutz villages.
Also 60 families from Nissanit in Gaza are in the midst of intense negotiations with Kibbutz Karmiya -- a collective community just 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) away.
Kibbutz members are willing to overlook the ideology because of the financial lifeline the settlers would throw them. Many kibbutz villages have been in serious trouble for years, unable to maintain their housing and other facilities.
Settlers come with money -- most families leaving the settlements are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in government compensation.
For Karmiya, selling quarter-acre plots for new housing to the settlers would generate enough money to provide infrastructure for the new neighborhood, with enough left over to renovate kibbutz facilities, including the village swimming pool, said Uri Sela, the kibbutz manager.
Another reason Kibbutz Karmiya would welcome the settlers is that the kibbutz residents want to boost the pullout, Sela said.
"We are certainly happy ... to join the process of helping and assisting the evacuees and helping them find a warm, comfortable place to live," Sela said.
To overcome the differences in lifestyle and belief, Sela said, the secular kibbutz has agreed to build a synagogue, and residents are willing to make other changes to accommodate the settlers.
Kibbutz Yad Hannah is interested in absorbing the Homesh residents because it wants to change its status from a communal farm to a town. That would allow the members to own their land and receive state pensions.
"It is a win-win situation. We and the settlers have a mutual interest," said Yaakov Seizel, the secretary of Yad Hannah, which is just inside Israel along the West Bank line.
Homesh residents prefer to move to a town deeper inside Israel, Rosenblatt said. But they also have not ruled out the kibbutz offer of building their new homes on 500-square-meter (1/8 acre) plots of land.
In any case, Seizel said the issue of Communist ideology was not raised when the settlers toured the kibbutz last week, because in any event, it's part of the distant past.
"Yad Hannah has not been Communist for many years," he said. "The Soviet Union collapsed years ago, the Berlin Wall fell and in the 1980's Yad Hannah absorbed its first right-wingers."
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