A Battle Rages in Gaza Strip -- Among Settlers

By Laura King

Sept. 25, 2004 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

RAFIAH YAM, Gaza Strip — In some ways, Avishai Nativ’s neighborhood resembles a pleasant slice of suburbia: neat, red-roofed homes with satellite dishes and spilling bougainvillea, and a sliver of blue Mediterranean shimmering on the horizon.

But also visible from his two-story home here in Rafiah Yam, the southernmost Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, are the concrete-slab slums of the Rafah refugee camp, the scene of repeated bloody fighting between Palestinian militants and the Israeli army during the 48-month-old conflict.

After 14 years here -- first a somewhat tranquil decade spent running a small business and raising three children, then four terrifying years of living next door to a battlefront -- Nativ has had enough. He wants to pack up his family and leave the Gaza Strip forever.

But he can’t. Not quite yet.

The Nativs and at least 100 families living in Gaza settlements have notified the Israeli government that they are willing to leave their homes as soon as they get an initial payment in the compensation package for departing settlers under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s initiative to withdraw from the seaside territory, which Israel seized from Egypt during the 1967 Middle East War.

However, their eagerness to leave Gaza, where about 8,000 Jewish settlers live among more than 1.2 million Palestinians, hasn’t gone down well with hard-liners -- in some cases, neighbors and friends -- who vow to use all available means to resist being uprooted.

“They call us traitors,” said Nativ, 49, stocky and sunburned with close-cropped hair. He brandished a Hebrew-language flier that appeared on walls all over the sprawling Gush Katif settlement, denouncing him and others by name after they went public with their desire to take the money and go.

“And these are my neighbors who did this,” he said, shaking his head. “People I have known for years.”

No one contests that life in the settlements is dangerous. Palestinian militants frequently lob crude projectiles at residents; a young Israeli woman with U.S. citizenship died Friday of her wounds after one such mortar attack on the settlement of Neve Dekalim.

Settlers who want to stay in Gaza cite such incidents as a motive for doing so, saying their presence serves to deflect attacks against Israel. Those who want to leave say such attacks show the indefensibility of the Jewish enclave.

The escalating confrontation between settlers in some ways mirrors the debate raging among Israelis as a whole over whether to give up Gaza.

A recent round of opinion polls suggested that 60% of the public supports Sharon’s withdrawal initiative. Although opponents of the plan are a minority, they are an extremely vociferous one.

Authorities are deeply worried by an upsurge of threats against the life of the prime minister -- a nightmarish prospect for Israelis still traumatized by the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Jew who believed it was his God-ordained duty to prevent the prime minister from ceding territory to the Palestinians.

Moreover, much of the opposition to a pullout comes from within Sharon’s own conservative Likud Party, leaving his government vulnerable to collapse unless he forges alliances with other parties that support his plan, such as left-leaning Labor.

Among the Gaza settlers, the split tends to run along ideological fault lines, and in many cases religious ones.

The strongest resisters to withdrawal mainly are observant Jews driven by the belief that Gaza is part of Israelis’ biblical birthright; the let’s-go faction is made up mostly of secular Jews.

Those who are determined to stay portray those seeking payment to leave as opportunists and misfits.

“I’m ashamed that we have such people in our society,” said Eran Sternberg, a spokesman for the Gaza Coast Regional Council. “They are people who did not fit in, and now they are taking their revenge by speaking against the rest of us.”

Last week, Sharon’s top advisors -- his inner Cabinet, made up of 10 senior ministers -- approved paying advances to settlers who want to leave before an evacuation takes place. But the first payments may not be made for weeks, or even months.

The new government agency that will administer the advances will not be up and running until next month at the earliest. And one pro-settlement party is threatening to go to court to block the payouts.

To obtain compensation, settlers must work out individual agreements with government assessors, based on factors such as the value of their homes and other property and whether they work inside the settlement.

Total payments are expected to range from $200,000 to $500,000 per family. It might sound like a lot of money, but most families don’t expect it to go very far in a country where housing costs approach those of large U.S. cities.

Those who wish to relocate are afraid of jeopardizing their compensation if they leave Gaza before the terms are final. In any event, most say they cannot afford to depart until they at least receive an initial payment.

In the meantime, they say, day-to-day life is growing unbearable.

“My family is living under terrible conditions,” said Simcha Weiss, who has lived in Gush Katif for nearly 20 years. “My children are insulted at school. The teacher won’t so much as say hello. Other children tell them, ‘Your mother is a traitor.’ ”

Nativ said his pizza-and-snack stand was the target of a boycott, though he acknowledged that fighting in adjacent Rafah and fear of infiltration via the Egyptian border, only a few yards away, already had driven away most customers.

Israeli activists who have been trying to aid the would-be departing families warn that the situation could turn violent if the government fails to act quickly.

“It’s a very dangerous time,” said Dorit Eldar, an organizer of a withdrawal-advocacy group called Shuvi, or Return, which was founded by mothers of Israeli soldiers who have served in Gaza.

When representatives of the group traveled to Gush Katif last month to meet with a few dozen settlers and give them legal and technical advice on their planned relocation, a mob gathered outside Nativ’s home, where the meeting was being held. Police had to help extricate the activists, who now hold such gatherings in southern Israel, just over the Gaza line.

Meir Rotenstein, a 42-year-old father of five who has lived in Neve Dekalim since it was founded nearly 21 years ago, said neighbors boycotted his appliance store when his wish to accept advance compensation and depart as soon as possible became known.

“I understand there may be differences of opinion,” he said. “But to employ violence and rob a family of its income? Unthinkable.”

Like others, Rotenstein was heartened by the Cabinet’s decision authorizing the payments. But he said many questions remained to be resolved.

“I would have liked to leave already,” he said. “But for now, we wait.”

Researcher Batsheva Sobelman in The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.