by Esther Korson
20 January, 2014
As the week of ‘sitting
Shiva’ following the death of Ariel Sharon has ended, there is one more thing
that I have to add to his legacy, and that is the tragedy of the
disengagement—initiated by Sharon---from the Gush Katif settlements in August of 2006.
I’ll begin with a bit
of history! Jewish people had actually been living in Gaza for over 1600 years until the historic
Jewish community was forced to move by the British at the time of the deadly
Arab riots of 1929. The village
of Kfar Darom was later
there on land that was purchased, before the village was evacuated following an
Egyptian siege in the War of Independence in 1948.
The nation of Israel decided to settle the area
again, and building began in earnest in 1968. By the time of the disengagement
in 2005, 8600 people were living there in 17 settlements—all of which were
situated on the sand dunes (that separate the coastal plane from the sea along
the southeastern Mediterranean).
It’s hard to imagine
that anything can grow on sand dunes!
But from that unlikely setting, beautiful communities were developed,
with parks and playgrounds and schools and synagogues, community centres,
office buildings and libraries. But possibly most astonishing of all was the
fact that the major income from Gush Katif consisted of agricultural
products! Greenhouses had been built with
a uniquely developed advanced technology that could grow insect-free herbs and
leafy vegetables! In addition, the community of Atzmona had Israel’s
largest plant nursery—and the Katif dairy was the second largest in the
country!
Most of the
agricultural products were exported to Europe.
Of the total Israeli exports, the Gush Katif settlements exported the following
percentages:
95% of bug-free lettuce
and greens; 70% of organic vegetables; 60% of cherry tomatoes (invented by Israel,
by the way); and 60% of geraniums and flowers. The total sum of exports from
the greenhouses of Gush Katif, which were owned by 200 farmers, came to
$200,000,000 per year! From sand dunes! (statistics from Wikipedia)
Friends of mine lived
in Kfar Darom and I’ll never forget my visits to the Gush Katif villages and to
their lovely home. The sand dunes had been turned into a paradise! They proudly
gave me a tour of the garden surrounding their home, and it was amazing to see
the many plants and flowers that had been induced to grow out of the sand! They
presented me with a handmade wreath, which was made from twigs and had on it a
shell from the nearby sea and dried flowers from their amazing garden. I still
have it today—a sad reminder that nothing else is left of that noble enterprise
that was known collectively as “Gush Katif”.
The disengagement, when
all 8600 residents of the area were forcefully uprooted from their charming
homes and villages, was totally heart wrenching and tragic. Almost none of the residents left voluntarily
and most of them did not even pack their belongings. The army had to physically remove most of the
people and it was a terribly sad time, both for the residents who were forced
by government decision to leave their wonderful homes, and also for the young
soldiers who had to physically remove them.
This needs a bit of history as well for you to truly understand how devastating
it really was.
It was more than 3500 years ago that the Lord
God of Israel
made a covenant with the Jewish people and promised us this very land upon
which we now dwell. (There are many
Scriptures, which you are probably familiar with, such as Genesis 17:7-8;
Jeremiah 31: 35-36; Deut. 1:8; Joshua 1: 2-4, 6 etc.) The Lord also promised that even when we were
exiled from the actual land, He still would never break His covenant with us.
And even more amazing—that He would bring us back home again! “…the Lord your God will bring you back from
captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the
nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. If any of you are driven out
from the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord will gather you, and
from there He will bring you. Then the
Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed and you
shall possess it. He will prosper you and
multiply you more than your fathers…” Deut. 30: 3-5
Those prophecies have indeed
been fulfilled in our lifetime. We came
home again to our Biblical homeland from more than 80 nations. But can you even imagine how, after 2000 long
years, we even remembered our ancient homeland?
How is it possible that century after century, scattered among the
nations, we still turned 3 times daily towards our beloved Jerusalem with the
prayers on our lips, with the hope and with the longing—“Next year in
Jerusalem…” It has been a Jewish refrain
for a very, very long time! Can you
imagine how He even kept us as a separate people during so many hundreds of
years? None of it could have been
possible except for our covenant-keeping, awesome and loving God.
After such a long time
away from home, there’s no way to describe the joy that is felt being back in Israel at
last! Therefore, when 8600 Jewish people
were forced to give up their beautiful homes and villages and livelihoods and
synagogues in Israel, in our very own land at last, it caused an almost unbearable pain—for those
who were uprooted, for those who had to physically remove the weeping families,
and for all who witnessed the tragedy of those days.
There was a man who on
the last day of the disengagement was the last person to leave. He lowered the Israeli flag from Gush Katif
for the final time. When Sharon’s body was lying
in state at the Knesset, that very man came and draped an Israeli flag over his
coffin. And many of those who went
through the removal came to the funeral nonetheless.
Another glimpse into
Israeli life….
