Ex-Settlers Still Protesting, Still Facing Eviction

Say this for the displaced residents of Elei Sinai: They’ve still got some fight left.

Three weeks after they were removed from their settlement in the northern Gaza Strip, dozens of former residents are living in a tent village they improvised next to a busy highway intersection a few miles up the road in Israel.

The campers are protesting what they say is the failure of Israeli officials to provide a suitable location that would keep the group intact. The government contends that the former Elei Sinai residents are being unreasonable by holding out for a coastal parcel that is too expensive.

So, the roadside standoff.

“This is our settlement. This is our home,” said Sarita Maoz, a 37-year-old community leader who shares a tent with her husband while their three children, ages 6, 8 and 10, sleep in another.

But the 30 to 50 families -- settlers and officials argue over how many have joined the protest -- may face eviction again because the kibbutz that leases the land from the government has filed a complaint to get them out.

Leaders of the Yad Mordechai kibbutz say they want to help the uprooted settlers but found themselves in apparent violation of zoning laws when government officials told them the land was to be used only for agriculture. The campers say the kibbutz has been strong-armed into making the complaint.

Police took statements, and the issue will be decided by a regional land-use council. It was not immediately clear when the panel would rule.

“They do not bother us, and if the law permitted it, we would let them stay as long as they like,” said Yossi Shachar, a spokesman for the kibbutz.

In the meantime, the protesters promise to remain on their patch of dusty field until the government gives them a site to build anew and to preserve what they describe as especially close ties.

“Elei Sinai is -- was -- a special community. We don’t want to break it. We want to stay together,” said Menachem Berger, 56, who is in charge of a makeshift communal kitchen that is surprisingly well-equipped.

Group meals are cooked, summer-camp style, in big pots on gas cookers. A 15-foot cargo container serves as a giant refrigerator, cooled by a generator that also powers lights, air conditioners and a television that sits near the open-air dining area.

Although leaders say 300 people are staying in the encampment, only two dozen or so were around on a recent afternoon.

The Israeli agency in charge of relocating settlers says it offered the Elei Sinai residents a number of temporary housing possibilities, including homes on another kibbutz in southern Israel, or hotel rooms in the nearby city of Ashkelon. An agency spokesman, Haim Altman, said 51 families from Elei Sinai chose one of those options, but the rest have held out.

The government has offered places for building a permanent community, but the protesters insist on a coastal area that the government can’t afford, he said. Their original settlement was near the beach.

“They have no reason to stay in the tents because we are still keeping empty hotel rooms in Ashkelon,” Altman said.

The residents say that scattering to hotels would once and for all end the 22-year-old community of Elei Sinai, which was founded by Israelis who had been evacuated from the Yamit settlement in 1982 when Israel withdrew from the Sinai peninsula as part of a peace treaty with Egypt.

Although settlers in most of the 20 other Jewish communities in Gaza were loaded onto buses, sometimes forcibly, during last month’s pullout, these residents left Elei Sinai on foot. They removed belongings, and when Israeli soldiers came Aug. 21, the group marched out the two-lane settlement road and then two miles north to the Yad Mordechai junction, which is home to a bustling service station and rest area.

The protesters have erected broad canopies and 30 dome tents, which are clustered tightly amid cube-shaped shelters fashioned from wood and tarpaulin. A carnival-style tent, with plastic windows and air conditioning, is used as a kindergarten and nursery. An open-sided military tent serves as the synagogue.

The campers brought the welcome sign from Elei Sinai, along with a barrel-sized stone commemorating two people killed by Palestinian gunmen in a 2001 attack on the settlement.

Donors drop by with food and supplies, but the protesters say it will cost $55,000 a month to keep the encampment running. They say they are prepared to hold out for months, if they are not kicked out first as illegal squatters.

“It’s like two wrestlers in the arena, checking each other,” said Berger, aping a fighter. Both sides, he said, “want to see who will break first.”

The adjustment has been challenging. The tight quarters have produced tensions at times, but Maoz said that is part of the communal experience. “We’re now like a kibbutz,” she said.

Edmon Amit, 33, an out-of-work financial specialist, moved with his wife and two children into a three-person dome tent. Two nights was enough of that. The family upgraded to one of the tarpaulin shelters, measuring about 80 square feet.

“My big house,” he said with a sour tone, pulling back the entrance flap. His house in Elei Sinai covered 2,300 square feet.

As trucks growled past on the highway, Amit expressed dismay over how Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had been praised in Israel and abroad since the pullout, which went off with relative ease during a nine-day period.

“They all say Arik Sharon is a good man,” he said, using the prime minister’s nickname. “And they don’t talk about us.”