The Exile and Expulsion
BibleSearchers Reflections - It was in the year of 2005, on the eve of the 9th of AV, 9,000 Jewish people were traumatically and violently exiled by their own Jewish leaders in the hopes to present to the world that Israel was serious about forming a national homeland for the Islamic Palestinians in the lands that were promised by the G-d of Israel for the Lost Tribes of the House of Israel.
Now in 2010, the fifth anniversary of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza that became the tragic expulsion of nearly 9,000 Jews from their homes along the Mediterranean Sea, land that was not wanted and rejected by the Palestinian people in Gaza. These Jewish patriots were still refugees from that dramatic and traumatic moment of Israeli history, when the government of Israel rejected their own. Instead of obeying the prophets and helping the poor and the homeless, the anti-Torah elements of the Jewish Zionist State destroyed Israel’s landmark pioneering region that had become the pride and joy of Jewish orthodox dreams of settling the sacred land of Israel.
On the eve of their expulsion, the Orthodox Jewish communities included about 350 family farms and Jewish agricultural businesses. They produced over $120 million of produce in exportable cut flowers and natural produce located in the Katif Bloc of Jewish villages in the region of the Gaza Strip. At that time, 70% of Israel’s organic natural produce were grown in the towns of Gush Katif. This also included; 15% of its agricultural exports, 90% of bug-free leafy vegetables, 45% of Israel’s exports of tomatoes, 95% of cherry tomato exports, 60% of exportable herbs.
One entire Jewish community, Ganei Tal, produced 60% of Israel’s geranium exports. Overall Gush Katif employed over 5,000 Jews and 5,000 Gazan Arabs who lived in productive peace, bringing between $60-70 million to the Israeli economy.
The Beginnings of the Seacoast Jewish Settlements in Gaza
It was in 1976, that the first of the Jewish communities that were constructed in the Jewish Gaza region became known as the town of Netzer Hazani. Soon after, three other “outposts” were built; Kfar Darom, Morag, and Kartif. They became productive towns with their own synagogues, town centers, and governing centers.
The lands upon which the Jewish families constructed their homes were large arid sand dunes, which was described by local residents as so desolate “no birds, insects, or even weeds” would live there. These same old-timer pioneers claimed that “even the amount of rain was small compared to today's rainfall measurements”. The Arabs who lived in adjacent lands called this region, “the cursed land” or El Gerara.
The Cursed Land according to the Arabs
Anita Tucker's celery greenhouse, often a stop on the route of tourists and journalists who visited Gush Katif, was host to a World Mizrachi group who came on what would be, for many, their first -and last -visit to the region.
It was in 1969 that Anita Tucker, a Brooklyn New Yorker living near the Atlantic Ocean, with her Cleveland Ohio husband returned to Israel and made aliyah. They first settled in Be’er Sheva. Seven years later, they wanted to establish a farm. With the help of the Ministry of Agriculture, they were directed to Gush Katif. There in Netzer Hazani, they settled in 1972 near the army outpost that became the strips first Jewish civilian center. With three kids and desolate sand dunes, their dreams began.
When Anita and her husband first arrived, the Arab mukhtar of the nearest Arab village came to welcome them bringing bread and salt, the traditional symbols of welcoming to our community. He asked her, “Why are you living here? Don’t you know that you can’t grow anything here in this cursed land? According to our tradition, the last people who lived here who grew anything were Abraham and Isaac…”
According to the early settlers, the Arabs were pleased that the Jews were living here for a strange phenomenon occurred; the showers began to rain again upon the land and the crops began to grow. They were seeing the strange results of that accompanied Jews as they reclaimed these ancient t lands that once were called a land the “flowed with milk and honey”.
The “cursed land’ soon became known as Netzer Hazani, where 70 families were soon developing an entire region of greenhouse farming growing flowers and spices, along with peppers, celery and many more types of vegetables.
The Flourishing Years
Two years later, the villages of Kfar Darom and Moshav Katif were formed – that latter ones by Jewish families that came from the United States. Soon the region was large enough to develop their governing Gaza Coast Regional Council.
In the year of 1979, the town of Ganei Tal was established creating a triad bloc with Moshav Katif and Netzer Hazani. South, another town Gadid began to flourish along with the “city” of N’vei Dekalim, were developed about ten kilometers away while to the north, farmlands came under development. By the year of 1984, there was in the development the Katif bloc of Jewish settlements that came to its complete fulfillment of twenty-one settlements when the last two, Shirat Hayam on the beachfront and Kerem Atzmoa were built.
The “cursed land’ soon became known as Netzer Hazani, where 70 families were soon developing an entire region of greenhouse farming growing flowers and spices, along with peppers, celery and many more types of vegetables.
There was one thing that separated the region of Gush Katif region from the rest of Israel. Here we saw a homogenous experimental Jewish development that grew upon the promises of HaShem, the G-d of Israel who said, that He would bless those who lived upon the land in which He called holy. In Israel, they stood as the finest example of Orthodox Jewish lifestyle that brought the pioneering experience of Torah lifestyle and developed what Arutz Sheva called;
Arutz Sheva – “In late 2003, with Gush Katif in its prime – featuring the best in settlement and blossoming of the Land of Israel, religious values and national idealism, heroic withstanding of terrorist and rocket attacks, and international acclaim for its agriculture.”
The Winds of War, Expulsion and Destruction
Then came the winds of war, The Arabs became restless and envied the Jewish people and soon wanted to posses that which they did not develop. But the death of Gush Katif came when their Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, wanting to appease America and demonstrate that he was serious about negotiating with the Palestinian people for a national homeland, stirred up the international sentiment. Known as the father of the “settler movement”, Arial Sharon, the force of development now became the force of its destruction.
In the year of 2003, at the Herzliya Conference in December of that year, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced his plans to destroy this entire region and return it back to the Arabs. Twenty months later, after many strikes, marches, resistance movements, referendums, and stormy Knesset meeting, the Israeli Defense Force became the first vehicle of expulsion for the Jewish families called the “salt of the earth”, since Hitler’s forces in the 1940s. They came not to destroy their bodies, but the Jewish soul, dreams and community. In twenty months by the 9th of AV the destruction of Gush Katif destroyed 21 towns, along with the homes, livelihoods, schools, of over 9000 Jewish people.
One of the great modern tragedies of the Jewish people came to reality when five years later most of these Orthodox Jewish farmers were still “refugees” living in the land of Israel. Its affect upon the Jewish people was best described by retired Supreme Court Judge Eliyahu Matza, who led the official commission into the affect of the Israeli’s government treatment of his own Jewish people, when he called it a “complete and utter failure of the executive branch."
Israeli Refugee Famers now Sued by former Gaza Employees
The Gaza Expulsion and the Palestinian Exaltation
Five years later, of the former 400 Gush Katif farmers, 280 (70%) of those farmers still had no homes, and no lands in which to farm. Only 39 have returned to work farming, 80 have found other jobs in which to work, many are volunteering, but most still have no job, no home, no farms and no employment.
If that ignoble fact were not enough, their former employees in Gaza, making the Israeli farmers collectively once one of the largest employers in Gaza, are now being sued by their former employers for dismissal indemnities and employee benefits they feel they are owed by the “dismissal and termination of their employment”, as revealed in an article by Israel National News titled, “Gaza Arabs Sue Gush Katif Farmers”.
This fact alone could not have happened if it was not promoted by left wing anti-Jewish Israeli lawyers promoting these suits with apparent funding by anti-Israeli organizations. The shame of these ignoble deeds against the former farmers, uprooted by their own Israeli government, who formerly were the backbone of the Israeli agricultural economy, may someday surface with the facts that they also may have been promoted by American and Northern European interests of descendants from the Lost Tribes of the House of Israel. The G-d of Israel will be outraged in the future with destruction against those lands. That was the Divine promise and the literal intent of the future redemption of All Israel.
What was well known, the Arabs from Gaza that were employed at the farms, saw many of these farms destroyed by the violence of their own Gaza people. Over the following years, it was reported that these same Gaza farmers, who learned the Israeli secrets of how to develop the most advance agricultural community in the world, could not reproduce the quality of vegetable produce as their former employers. They used the same farming techniques; the bug-free environments once under Israeli ownership and control were now producing bug-damaged produce under Gaza farmer’s control. The rain that once fell upon the Israeli farms returned to its former arid conditions of drought. How could the blessings and curses of the G-d of Israel, not Allah, be more evident. As revealed in “The Jewish Voice and Opinion”, on June 2006, we read:
The Jewish Voice – “Before the withdrawal last summer, Gush Katif was a thriving bloc of communities most of whose residents worked in agriculture. In the wake of the expulsion, some wealthy American Jews (and Microsoft giant Bill Gates) bought several of the more successful greenhouses from the Jewish deportees for $14 million. The philanthropists then gave the 1.3 million Palestinian- Gazan victors the greenhouses plus 790 acres of sand dunes that the Jews had turned into fertile farmland. But instead of working the greenhouses to grow the produce which had made Jewish Gush Katif successful, the Arabs systematically dismantled many of them, looting whatever was not nailed down.
About 70 of the roughly 1,000 acres left barren when Israel expelled the Jews was rendered unworkable. Another round of looting occurred in Gaza when Fatah gunmen, who had been hired to protect the remaining greenhouses, abandoned their posts because they had not been paid. Reports cited witnesses who said some of the security guards participated in the looting.”
It first began with “two test lawsuits” now over 80 lawsuits have been filed against former Gush Katif Israeli farmers, who were not only driven from their home, but were initially sued by their own Israeli government for non-payment of the remainder debt on the property that had been confiscated by the government of Ariel Sharon.
Their personal belongings were put into large transportable containers and were not released until the costs of transporting and storage were paid by their owners. Today, 70% of them are still refugees living in the land of Israel in flimsy caravillas in Jewish refugee transit camps.
It is reported that the Gush Katif Committee and the Gush Katif Farmers Knesset Lobby are trying to fight back by raising funds for their legal defense, of which NIS 250,000 ($65,000) is needed immediately to pay for defense. With the fact of government intervention bleak, some of the farmers in Gaza in 2005 have now had liens placed against their properties that they have today. As Dror Vanunu with the Gush Katif Committee stated;
Dror Vanunu – “One might have thought, that after the uprooting from Gush Katif, the destruction of the greenhouses, the hardships in restoring their farms, the poor compensation, and the foot-dragging in the rebuilding of their homes, the farmers of Gush Katif have suffered enough and do not need any more challenges.
But no... The Gazan workers who once made a living and sustained their families from their work in the Gush Katif farms, and who learned from their Israeli employers the secrets of the most advanced agriculture in the world, decided with the gracious help of Israeli lawyers - apparently funded by anti-Israeli organizations - to file a law suit against their former employers. Yes, they are suing the same farmers who are themselves unemployed and who are striving for the past five years to restore what was vandalized, desecrated and destroyed in the blink of an eye.”
Renewal and Redemption
The Way Life was in a Jewish Gaza Settlement at Gush Katif
Yet, out of the ashes of the destruction of Gush Katif the Jewish families have not failed to still dream of that day in which they can begin the process of reclamation, and redemption of the “Promised Land” and once again in fulfillment of their covenantal relationship with the G-d of Israel, to reclaim the land He calls “sacred”. This is the stuff of the true pioneers for the G-d of Israel.
South, in the environments of the arid regions of Northern Negev, dynamic plans are coming to visible reality. With the theme of “Od Katif Chai” meaning “Katif still Lives”, a total of 18 community settlements are actively being resurrected along with 18 regional projects.
To the north of Ashkelon, the town of Be’er Ganim (“Well of Gardens”) is being built represented by the acronym of the homes that were taken from them in Southern Gaza called Bdolach, Rafiah Yam, Gadid, Nisanit, Morag. Its name was first used by a town in Netanya region that eventually merged with the larger city of Or Yehuda. That city changed its name to Pe’er Ganim as the name meaning, “Beauty of the Gardens”.
In the Northern Negev, new towns will soon be built, called Katif Amatzia, populated by the expulsed patriots from Moshav Katif. In Neta (Mirsham) there will be populated former residents from Tel Ketifa and Kfar Darom. The Jewish families that built the beautiful seaside beachfront homes at Shirat HaYam (Song of the Sea) will soon be moving into new community called Maskiyot in the desert regions in the Jordan Valley region.
Jewish Orthodox neighborhoods were also added to existing communities. These include N’vei Herzog community in Ashkelon, Avnei Eltan in the Golan Heights region, Ganei Tal merging with the identity of the Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim, and Shvut Katif in the region of Yad Binyamin.
Besides the eighteen towns now sprouting within the lands of Israel, eighteen projects are now erupting also on the sacred land of Israel or within the hearts and minds of the Jewish people. These eighteen projects include the construction of “four new synagogues in Talmei Yafeh, Yesodot and Maskiyot; two regional community centers and four youth centers for extra-curricular, cultural and supportive activities; a family unit lecture series and workshop; 150 student scholarships; financial, medical, and vocational assistance to families; the establishment of the Gush Katif Legacy Center.”
The pioneer dreams and spirit, though assaulted by their own Jewish government, abandoned by the majority of their Leftist Jewish community, were not destroyed as the demonstration of the pleasure of the G-d of Israel again has returned as to bring new lands and new communities to their divine fulfillment.
Credit to Hillel Fendel – “Gush Katif: Past and Future” – Arutz Sheva – July 15, 2010
Credit to Hillel Fendel – “Gaza Arabs Sue Gush Katif Farmers” – Arutz Sheva – June 4, 2010
To Read more on the Past, Present and Future of Gush Katif, you may read about it on the Official Website of Gush Katif
You might want to read – “The Expulsion of the Jews from Gaza and the Land of Israel by the Government of Israel – Part One” – BibleSearchers Reflections
You might want to read - “The Expulsion of the Jews from Gaza and the Land of Israel by the Government of Israel – Part Two” - BibleSearchers Reflections
You might want to read: “A Tour of Gush Katif”; the way it was and how they left it – Credit to Paula Says