The long road ahead

The future isn't so rosy, apparently, for the settlers who have to try and rebuild their lives elsewhere in the State of Israel. The following is from someone I know in Israel, who lives in Alon Shvut, part of the Gush Etzion settlement just east of Jerusalem.

At the present moment, these people do NOT have a bright future. They are being offered compensation, but it is absolutely NOT adequate to compensate for what they have lost. They are preparing lawsuits against the government demanding much more money, and may eventually win, but at the present moment that is not guaranteed. The money they are being offered, in almost every case, is not enough to rebuild the lives they had before.

To test this out, I went to the website of the Disengagement Authority. They have an "online calculater" there that residents of Gaza can use to determine what compensation they are entitled to. To check it out, I decided to do a test. I pretended that I was one of them, and answered all the questions about my house and life in Alon Shvut as if I lived there. I told them how many kids I had, what size my house is, how long I have owned it, the fact that I work outside of the area being evacuated, etc. And when it was finished, the figure it gave me for all the various compensations put together was roughly the amount of money my house is worth. But if you think about it, that's not enough. If I was being forced out of my home under those conditions, I'd need much more. Like rental costs for the 2-3 years it might take me to build a new home. Moving costs. Costs for new furniture because my old stuff might not be suitable to the new home. Anyone who moves knows that it costs a lot of money. And on top of all that, to be fair, they should be given money to cover all of that and then additional compensation for emotional stress as well. They are being forcibly evicted from their communities against their will, on only a few months' notice, and they are entitled to compensation for that, as well as major assistance in rebuilding their lives. And although the government brags that "there is a solution for every settler", in reality it's just not true.

More importantly, the government is not offering them any options. The government does NOT have anywhere near enough homes. They said they were building temporary housing for them in Nizan, and they actually built homes there, but only for about 1/4 of the people. And the houses there are tiny. There was a story in the paper a few weeks ago about a family that agreed to move into one of those temporary homes (which are meant to last them for at least 2-3 years until something more permanent can be built). The family has been evicted by the government from a large home that was 280 square meters in area, and they arrived to pick up the keys for the home that they had signed on to receive, and discovered it was 60 square meters! They were fighting and begging to be given a larger one...90 square meters. And they had been told they weren't eligible.

Although most of the Gush Katif settlers are ideologically committed to staying there no matter what, there were settlers from the (largely Secular) communities in the Northern Gaza strip who said months ago that they would agree to move peacefully if the government gave them proper alternative housing arrangements, and as of last week still had not moved because the government came up with no options for them.

And it gets worse. Most of the people there are now unemployed, and the government has no options for them. A lot of them are now already in serious financial trouble. And no one has the foggiest idea where all of these children are going to be going to school in two weeks. And after this meeting I was just at, I see that it's even worse than what I heard before.

The most basic things have not been taken care of. Like, for example, the government arranged for hotel rooms for them to stay in for at least a few weeks until they figure out what they are going to do, and they are being given "half board" in the hotel - two meals a day (breakfast and dinner). But these are families with small children - they can't be expected to skip lunch! Or laundry service. Nobody thought of where they are supposed to do their laundry. And 100 other such details.

By all accounts, whatever one's political opinions are, these people are not criminals and they are not enemies of the state. They are law-abiding tax-paying citizens who went there at the request of previous governments who felt it was important to settle that area, and now the government changed its mind and they are being forced out. More than that, they are pioneers who sacrificed so much for the country's security. They have broken no laws and done nothing wrong. But after all the flowery speeches are over, that's the way they are being treated. The whole compensation thing is terribly inadequate and terribly disorganized. It seems the government did a very good job at planning exactly how to destroy Gush Katif, down to the last detail, but did almost nothing to prepare for rebuilding it.