 |
 |
 |
|
|
Residents of Gush Katif at a town gathering in Neveh Dekalim
|
|
|
|
|
|
| By Orit August 6, 2005 |
| Orit will be reporting daily from Gush Katif exclusively for Israel Insider. |
| |
August 4, 2005, Day 2
I woke up and it wasn't a dream: I was in Gush Katif.
But after morning coffee, doubts started to fill my head. Should I really stay? Will I manage? Can I shirk my Tel Aviv obligations? And can I miss that night's huge party I was anticipating for weeks at my favorite Tel Aviv nightclub?
I called the nightclub's manager, a friend of mine, and he wasn't encouraging.
"These people are working towards our destruction," he said. "They feed off us, like parasites -- we work, while they get government subsidies. You're naive. You don't understand the truth."
He wasn't about to listen to listen to me, so I called another friend, but he wasn't sympathetic either.
"There are some things -- very painful things -- we need to do for peace. We don't need to be in Gaza. We'll be better off -- physically and spiritually."
I started to explain that disengagement will only lead to more bloodshed. But he gently disagreed, and I remembered it's hardly worth arguing with committed leftists.
I could offer plenty of rational arguments, but more often than not anti-disengagement views are based on a self-survival instinct, a gut feeling, and an intuitive clairvoyance.
But they grated my resolve. Am I naive? What am I doing here? Is this cause really worth fighting for?
Just then I ran into Gilad who I met at the barbeque the night before. I asked him if he gets everything from the state.
"That's simple leftist talk. They don't know what's going on. They believe what they want to believe. I didn't get any more land than my friends living in a development Negev town. My high taxes pay for lampposts, roads, and security in Tel Aviv. Is that fair?"
In a rush, he left me with an invitation to join him at the beach some time, but the day would prove to provide me with more answers.
To my delight, a friend of mine from Jerusalem, a photographer, was accompanying an American reporter to Kfar Darom, one of the oldest and most hard-line settlements in the Gush. He let me join him.
A religious woman fed the reporter with the standard arguments against the expulsion.
"Gush is just the first step. After this will be Judea and Samaria, then Mizpe Rimon, the Haifa, then Tel Aviv." Then she continued, "Peace won't be achieved through any overnight peace process -- it'll be a slow process, 10, 20 or 50 years, but it could happen, only when the Palestinians prove they can live here, peacefully."
Then we took a tour of the recently built "tent-city," where dozens of families from all over Israel, particularly the settlements, settled to provide more manpower against the expulsion. It looked like a big camping site. Kids were playing, food was cooking in the makeshift kitchen, young boys were building more tents.
In one of the tents a man explained to the reporter what he would do on the fateful day, his wife looking at him with pride and a baby on her shoulder.
"We're not going anywhere. I'll invite the soldiers inside. I'll talk to them. I'll ask them if they think what they are doing is right. I think that they have a Jewish heart deep down and that they won't be able to do it."
That would be a beautiful sight.
I looked at him: his white button down shirt, beard, kippah. He looked different from most secular Israelis. Secular Jews may find it difficult to identify with them, and instead of trying to understand them, label them "fanatics" detrimental to the State. Leftists spend years trying to understand terrorist Arabs, but would hardly listen to someone who tries to open their hearts to religious settlers.
I felt like telling the man: wear jeans, shave your beard -- look like you're from Tel Aviv and then give them the speech. Then it won't be "us" and "them."
But later that night I walked around the Neve Dekalim town square with pink slacks and a short-sleeve T, and I felt a little out of place. I, too, was different.
Then I bumped into Hezzy, a secular guy from Herziliya, who snuck in the day after me. I told him how I felt.
"No, they are all happy you are here. Don't feel uncomfortable."
Then, as we waited for a concert given by Ariel Zilber, a secular-singer-settler, we watched in awe as teenage boys and girls greeted us warmly, hung-out, and raised the spirits of the community.
"You don't see kids like this where we come from," he said. I agreed.
They radiated goodness and a quest for positive values. For the most part, they are not doped-up in their room, creating unwanted pregnancies, talking back to their
parents, or judging by appearances. They are the cream of the crop of Israeli youth.
That night, as kids started dancing to Ariel Zilber, boys on one side and girls on the other, I hoped that this was practice for the day when the "decree is annulled."
While I would have felt a little more free, secular and sexy at the nightclub, this was one of the best parties I'd been to in a long time. Let it remain here, in a week and a half, and for years to come.
Orit's daily Disengagement Diaries may be syndicated by contacting publisher@israelinsider.com
|
|
 
|
|
|
|
Click on the blue headline to read a Talkback comment and respond to it. Click on the  icon to send a private email to the talkback writer. The icon appears only if the writer has decided to be contacted. If no popup window appears, please make sure your popup blocker allows israelinsider.com.
|
|
| |
|
|
