Settlers Dig In Their Heels in Gaza

When Tami Zilberschein wants to take one of her five children to the dentist, or shop for any but the most basic of food items, or pay a holiday visit to her in-laws, she plans her errand like a military operation -- which, in fact, it is.

Zilberschein, an immigrant from New Jersey, lives with her family in Netzarim, a Jewish settlement of about 50 families set among the scrubby sand dunes and dirt-poor Palestinian villages of the north-central Gaza Strip. There’s only one way in or out: under the escort of Israeli soldiers, in a bulletproof bus or an armored transport vehicle.

“We’re just trying to live a normal life, under somewhat abnormal circumstances,” said Zilberschein, who wears the close-fitting head covering and ankle-length skirts of a devoutly observant Jewish woman. “Because it’s important for us to be here -- we have a divine moral obligation to live in this place.”

Zilberschein and her neighbors in Netzarim believe that they -- and Israel as a whole -- should make whatever sacrifices necessary to maintain the settlement. But Israelis, including some members of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s conservative Likud Party, increasingly are questioning whether the country should shoulder the political and security burdens of keeping the Gaza settlements -- particularly Netzarim, the most isolated and vulnerable of them all.

The growing public debate over the fate of the Gaza settlements comes as a clutch of unofficial peace initiatives examines various concessions Israel might be willing to make for accord with the Palestinians. After more than three years of conflict, Gaza -- where 7,000 settlers live among more than 1.3 million Palestinians -- looks less and less like the place where Israel will choose to draw a line in the sand.

On Israel’s political left, calls to relinquish the Gaza settlements date back at least 15 years, to the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, when images of a chronically and chaotically violent enclave flickered constantly on Israeli television screens. Even then, it was the kind of place soldiers deployed there would not want their mothers to know about.

Lately, however, the notion of scuttling the Gaza settlements has spread across the political spectrum. Last month, Sharon’s aides disclosed the existence of a contingency plan to unilaterally evacuate the sites, specifically naming Netzarim as the likely and logical place to start.

Sharon refused to confirm that the idea was under consideration but also refused, when pressed, to offer assurances to Netzarim residents that the settlement would not be uprooted.

The settlers, nearly all of whom are religiously observant, describe Netzarim as the continuation of a 2,000-year Jewish presence in the narrow Mediterranean coastal strip.

“God wants us here,” said Shirit Yarhi, who has lived in Netzarim for a dozen years.

But even among religious Jews in Israel as a whole, Gaza has never been part of what many settlers in the West Bank believe to be their biblical birthright. Many of the West Bank settlements are anchored to places of historical and religious significance to Jews, such as Hebron, where tradition says the patriarch Abraham is buried, or Shiloh, where Joshua is said to have cast lots to distribute land to Israelite tribes.

“The Gaza Strip is not part of the discussion over what we call the Land of Israel, on the biblical level,” said lawmaker Ophir Pines-Paz of the opposition Labor Party, who recently introduced a bill in the parliament, or Knesset, calling for the evacuation of the Gaza settlements. The measure failed -- in Israel, a decision of that nature and magnitude would be made by the prime minister and the military -- but Pines-Paz said he was trying to broaden the Gaza debate.

Among Israeli politicians, there is little taboo against describing Gaza as a quagmire from which Israel should be eager to free itself. Amram Mitzna, Labor’s unsuccessful candidate for prime minister in the last elections, could usually count on a good reception on the campaign trail when he talked about giving up Gaza.

“Let’s be honest,” he would say, warming up the crowd. “Is it a prize? Do we want it? Really, is there any reason, any reason at all, that we would want it?”

Human rights groups point out that the areas of Gaza lying close to the settlements have long been places of deadly danger for Palestinians, with insufficient distinction made between the assailants who regularly attempt to cut through the perimeter fence and the innocent civilians living nearby.

“He was just an old man farming his fields, and they shot him dead, just like that,” said Jamal Ashab, whose 73-year-old father, Abdullah, was killed in a vineyard adjoining Netzarim last March. Among Israeli soldiers, too, Netzarim’s reputation is that of a combat zone as dangerous as any in which they might expect to serve. A dozen soldiers have died there in the last three years.

Debate over Netzarim was spurred by the latest fatalities -- three soldiers, two of them 19-year-old women, slain six weeks ago in their barracks at a base adjoining the settlement. When their grieving parents traveled to the settlement to see the spot where they had died, it was national news in Israel.

After those deaths, an experienced reserve unit was sent to Netzarim to take over guard duty for a month. After completing their tour of duty, several seasoned officers gave a highly unusual interview to the Haaretz newspaper saying they believed that Netzarim was impossible to defend militarily and that soldiers should not be asked to risk their lives trying.

“I don’t remember returning from any other service so emotionally drained,” the company commander, Maj. Yoav Teeni, told the newspaper. “Staying in Netzarim goes against all logic. The distance between the deaths of citizens and soldiers and so-called normal life is infinitesimal -- it all depends on luck.”

The settlers, however, insist that they are a strategic asset to Israel, not a liability. Almost everyone living in Netzarim likes to point out that the settlement was created in 1972 as a buffer against a possible Egyptian attack on Israel’s coastal plain.

Egypt and Israel made peace in 1978, and in 1994, Israel handed partial autonomy in Gaza over to Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority -- a disastrous move, in the settlers’ view. They say returning control over Gaza to the Palestinians allowed militant groups to flourish.

“Now we are a line of defense against them, these terrorists,” said Yarhi, the longtime resident. “If we get out of Netzarim now, we would reward them and encourage them in their attacks against all of Israel.”

On a sparklingly sunny afternoon, Netzarim has the same sleepy, suburban air of many of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Kindergarten lets out, and children rush for the swing sets. Chanting can be heard outside the yeshiva, or religious seminary. People make their way along sand-strewn paths to the settlement’s one small shop, which sells essentials such as milk and bread.

But the night is often filled with the rattle of gunfire and the whine of mortar shells. By the settlers’ count, there have been more than 400 rocket and mortar attacks against Netzarim in the last three years. Two civilians, both elderly men visiting family in the settlement, were killed in a Palestinian infiltration last year.

At Netzarim, Israel has gone to extraordinary lengths to allow the settlers to go on living in the middle of what amounts to an active battlefield. In 2000, in the early months of the intifada, authorities decided that travel to Netzarim even in armored vehicles was too dangerous. For 11 days, settlers were flown in and out by army helicopter.

Even now, in the midst of a relative lull, no one takes safety for granted. Six months ago, an armored bus traveling to the settlement hit a roadside bomb, injuring several aboard. “Shootings and explosions along the route, as well as in the community, are just part of the routine,” said Itzik Levy, a resident who drives the armored bus. “It doesn’t come as a surprise -- it’s not pleasant when it happens, but everyone expects it.”

There are 21 other Jewish settlements in Gaza, most of them in the large bloc of Gush Katif, but none is accessible from Netzarim. To get to the nearest settlement, Kfar Darom, only three miles away, Netzarim’s residents must leave the Gaza Strip by military convoy and reenter by a separate road on which settlers are allowed to drive in private cars.

Every day, from early morning until late at night, the settlers -- commuters heading to office jobs inside Israel, mothers with babies in arms and toddlers clutched firmly by the hand -- squeeze in alongside gun-toting soldiers for the bumpy ride. They pass pillbox-style fortifications draped with camouflage netting, traversing acres of what were once flourishing fruit orchards and vegetable fields, now razed to provide the army with a clear field of fire and deprive would-be attackers of cover.

For reasons of security, the Israeli government does not disclose the number of troops guarding the settlements, or the cost of this protection. But Pines-Paz, the lawmaker, said he believed the Gaza settlements cost about $150 million annually to maintain and protect.

In recent weeks, Israeli peace activists have resorted to direct, personal appeals to the settlers of Netzarim to rethink their reasons for living there.

“We write to you with much pain and deep concern for the fate of soldiers and Israeli citizens who risk their lives every day and every hour for the sake of defending a settlement that everyone understands will only be evacuated in the future,” the Peace Now group said in a Nov. 3 letter to Netzarim’s residents.

But the settlers insist that they will not leave unless forced.

“I would never do anything against our army or our government, but forcing us to give up our community would be an awful decision, a huge mistake,” said Zilberschein, the mother of five. “I’d go. But they’d have to drag me.”