The Settlers' Lament

By Johanna McGeary/Gush Katif

Deep in the heart of the Gaza Strip, the Hilburgs are pretending to have a normal day. Life in the Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif is out of the ordinary at the best of times, but this is the worst of times. Yet Bryna, 55, defiantly acts as if nothing has changed, washing the dishes, tidying the living room, settling down to write end-of-year reports on her speech-therapy students. Out in their nearby hothouses, her husband Sammy, 56, is resolutely prepping the sandy soil for the next vegetable crop. But their bleak eyes, full of anger and pain and loss, tell the real story.

Beginning this week, their hamlet of Netzer Hazani and the other 20 Jewish settlements that occupy more than one-third of the Gaza Strip will be ghost towns, the Hilburg home of 26 years reduced to rubble, the very purpose of their lives stripped away. Under the controversial policy Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls disengagement, some 8,700 Israeli residents in Gaza and another 674 in the West Bank must leave their homes or face removal by force. The plan has the support of the international community, including the Bush Administration, which sees the withdrawal as a small but vital step toward the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state--even though Sharon has defined it strictly as a strategic move to shorten Israel's defensive lines. A majority of the Israeli public, too, believes it's time for the Gaza settlers to go, not least because the rest of the country's sons in the army keep dying in order to protect a few thousand families occupying a sliver of congested, hostile territory.

But for a devoted few, including Gaza residents like the Hilburgs, the abandonment of the settlements represents a shameful, even sinful betrayal of the ideological foundations of the Jewish state. As the date for the pullout has neared, activists from outside the strip have blocked highways, spread nails on roads and sought to crowd into the settlements to thwart the evacuation with their bodies. Israeli police estimate that more than 2,500 have smuggled themselves into Gush Katif; some plan to test Sharon's vow to use the army to remove any who try to resist the evacuation, pressing their slogan, "Jews don't deport Jews." The opposition--which is dominated by an assortment of far-right settlers from the West Bank, messianic rabbis, religious extremists and restless teenagers--has virtually hijacked the disengagement issue from the Gaza residents, who voice their dissent in acts of denial. Whether they succeed in disrupting the evacuation, the protesters are intent on turning it into a test of Israel's very identity. In this showdown, Sharon's detractors--including former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who resigned from the Cabinet last week to side with the opposition--claim the higher power of divine right is on their side: the land God gave to the Jews cannot be given away by any state. The issues raised for the country are cosmic. Will a minority of settlers who have long enjoyed an outsize ability to set the national agenda continue to shape the country's destiny? Will Israelis live by the laws of the state or under the authority of religion?

At the center of the rancor are families like the Hilburgs, who believed they were doing their part to advance the Jewish enterprise by settling in territory they regard as part of Eretz Yisrael. Like a surprising number of other Gaza settlers, the Hilburgs are Americans who followed their ideals to Israel, giving up a comfortable future in the U.S. for the rigors of pioneer life. Now they are being ordered to abandon that life by the same Israeli leaders who had made settling the occupied territories an article of faith. For those like the Hilburgs, it's not just about policy: Bryna is afraid the deep personal anguish of the settlers will be lost amid the roar of political conflict. Their new lives are only now being designed by a government agency, leaving them bewildered and anxious about what the future will hold. To start over when you choose is one thing, says Bryna. "But when they tell you you're redundant, they don't need you--'Here, take a few shekels and go'--that's a human catastrophe."

For the Americans in Gush Katif, the disengagement marks the bitter climax of an odyssey that spans a generation, one that has taken people like the Hilburgs from the streets of Brooklyn to the dusty farmland of the Gaza Strip. I spent a week with the Hilburgs and other U.S.-born settlers in the enclaves of Gush Katif as they prepared to uproot again. Their saga provides a glimpse of the honest dreams that inspired the struggle to realize the Zionist vision of Israel--and why even harder changes are required if that vision is to survive at all.

Logic suggests that for Jews, choosing to live in fortress colonies on captured land packed with 1.3 million Palestinians was always folly. But if you look at Gush Katif through the Hilburgs' eyes, it wasn't like that. When Bryna and Sammy first saw their future home in Gaza, there was nothing there but sand. "Sand, sand, more sand," says Bryna. "I loved it," says Sammy. "I thought he was nuts," she says. "But we needed to eat, to buy shoes for the kids, so I said, O.K., we'll look." As new immigrants in 1972 who wanted to live away from the city, they were given two choices by the Israeli agency that oversaw the absorption of newcomers: the Golan Heights or the Gaza Strip, captured territories that the Labor government of the time wanted to cement under Israeli control. "They said, Do you prefer cows or tomatoes?" recalls Bryna. "We decided, tomatoes. It was a practical decision. We found work, a house, a community we could help build."

Back then, the dunes staked out in Gaza for settlement were an empty tract. There were no Arab houses within view, no fences, no military bases, no sign the Jews were entering enemy territory. The 33 families who arrived in Netzer Hazani to occupy 33 small bungalows and work in 33 hothouses newly plunked down on the sand saw themselves as welcome pioneers who would make the desert bloom. They went to shop in Arab Khan Yunis, got haircuts from Palestinian barbers, drank coffee in Palestinian cafes, danced at Palestinian weddings. Although Sammy's view is harsher now, he says, "It never felt then like a hostile environment."

Today the Gush Katif bloc of settlements is a fortress under siege, a surreal mix of suburbia and security. The tight skein of roads in the area, restricted to Israelis, run through barren no-go zones where every tree and plant and dwelling has been bulldozed for a hundred yards. Thriving hothouses and comfortable red-roofed villas set in lush, green gardens spread across the dunes, huddling inside rings of razor wire and electric fence. Three-story military watchtowers draped in camouflage rear up out of back gardens, and tanks patrol the perimeters. The only Palestinians allowed within view are the laborers who come in each day to work in the hothouses. And when the Palestinians go home, they pass through military checkpoints where they are forced to show they have not taken any greenhouse fertilizer, which could be turned into explosives for use against the settlers. As two intifadehs brought ever increasing violence to Israel, Gush residents came to think of themselves as citizen soldiers on the nation's front lines, ensuring its survival by their refusal to be cowed. "We are proud of what we built here, what we did here for ourselves and for the country," says Sammy. "Even when the mortars hit, we never shot back, and we never ran away."

If they thought of themselves first as farmers and builders, there were other reasons the Hilburgs and many other Americans like them came to Gaza. Only devout Jews lived there, and the Hilburgs are religious Zionists--what are called knitted-yarmulke Jews, who follow the Orthodox faith but not to the extremes of the ultra-religious. Born in 1949 to a pious family in Brooklyn's Borough Park, Sammy spent eight years in religious schools before transferring to a public high school, where he majored "in sports," he says. After a stint studying automotive mechanics, Sammy joined the Marine Corps in 1968 just in time to ship out to Vietnam. He was badly wounded twice and spent the next year in a military hospital. But he "always knew [he] would go to live in Israel," he says. "It was part of the way I was brought up, taught that the No. 1 thing to be a good Jew was to live in Israel."

In 1971, he met Bryna at a Bnei Akiva (a Zionist youth group) meeting in New York City, married her and made aliyah (literally, the ascent) to Israel. Bryna too was reared to Zionism, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Born there in 1950, she went to religious school in her early years. Bryna says her photographer father longed to move to Israel, but his mother, who had fled to a better life in the U.S. from Russia, wouldn't accept it. "They were secular, and when he said he wanted to move to Israel in 1953, my grandmother said, 'You're crazy! They're starving there. They have ration cards! You have a wife and kids to feed. You can't!' He always regretted that." Bryna was determined to fulfill his dream "because he taught me Zionism is not just religious but a state of mind, a way of life, for Jews who believe in Israel."

The Hilburgs buckled down to the practical business of turning Gaza's sand into fruitful farmland. They had six children: three are married, two are in the army, and the children profess a range of religious faith, from ultra-Orthodox to secular. Their second son Yochanan was killed in 1997, at age 22, while serving in an elite Israeli commando unit during a raid into Lebanon. The Hilburgs defied family members who urged that Yochanan receive a military funeral in Jerusalem. "He loved it here," says Bryna. "We decided he would be buried here, where he lived, where we can get to him." Now the Hilburgs face a second heartbreak: the Gush Katif cemetery housing 48 Jewish graves will have to be evacuated too. "They have to get out every single particle," says Bryna as she stares at her own hands, "every joint and finger and toe that has fallen away when there are no ligaments left." The Israeli government has said it will remove those graves after all the settlers have gone, but most families still have no idea where their loved ones will be reburied. Bryna and Sammy are anguished at the uncertainty. "It's the hardest thing of all," says Bryna.

Like most of Gaza's residents, the Hilburgs thrived by growing organic crops, notably cherry tomatoes for export to Europe. The Hilburgs say it breaks their hearts to dismantle the hothouses they worked so hard to build, but in the nearby enclave of Gadid, another U.S.-born settler, Lynn Bentolila, expresses a sentiment widely shared in the Gush: "I don't want to see [the Palestinians] using my land or living in my house." The Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority have been wrangling over the issue: both agree the Israeli houses should be destroyed but dispute who would pay to clean up the mess afterward.

At the Hilburg house, no steps have been taken to leave. Like so many Gaza residents, they are counting on denial and faith to save their community at the zero hour. Bryna folds her hands in her lap and says, "The simple fact is, I don't want to go. It's my home of 26 years. My roots are here. Netzer Hazani has what I need and want. We built it up. We made a beautiful place, beautiful in spirit." So the Hilburgs say they will do anything peaceable and lawful that will stop the clock, but nothing more. They obeyed when the Gush Katif council quoted from Isaiah: "You shall triumph by stillness and quiet; your victory shall come about through calm and confidence."

Surveys suggest that some 90% of the settlers will depart peacefully once eviction begins this week. But then there are the Gaza settlers from a younger, more fervid generation, including more recent American recruits like Haim Gross, 30. Born in New York but a longtime resident of Israel, he moved five years ago to the tiny settlement of Morag, specifically to confront the Palestinians and hold the land for Israel. He does not farm but studies Torah while his wife teaches school to feed a family that includes four sons ages 7 to 2. Gross believes he is on a divine mission. "God promised this land to us, and there is no reason for us to give it over," he says. "I moved here to protect Israel from Palestinian terrorists." His embattled outpost does not pretend to be suburbia: it's a declaration of occupation. "We knew it would not be an easy life here," says Gross, who carries an army-issue M-16 rifle and usually packs a pistol beneath his religious shirt. "But we're doing this for the Jews."

Gross is convinced that the settlers are Israel's vital bulwark against the mortars and rockets and suicide bombers of the enemy, by taking most of their fire. Disengagement, he says, will only move Palestinian attacks deeper into Israel. Sammy Hilburg is worried that Israel is giving up too much for too little too. "Israel is losing, losing these beautiful, productive farms, losing precious land, creating terrible divisions in Israeli society, giving a prize to terror, encouraging more terror ..." His voice trails off. "Damage, that's all disengagement is doing, terrible damage."

From his yard, Gross points proudly to several brand-new bungalows across the road and a row of fresh concrete pads ready for tents. He is helping bring in resisters to swell the settlers' ranks for evacuation day. Even his parents have sneaked into Morag for the duration. "We will be so strong that we will win," he says. "The people of Israel will win. They'll push Sharon out of there, not us out of here." He is convinced that the resisters can make the government fold, but meanwhile, he says, "we pray to God that he will do a miracle."

Most of the settlers aren't counting on divine intervention. Fresh from planting new shoots in his Gadid hothouse, Lynn's husband Gabriel says, "I would like to believe a miracle will happen and we will stay, but because I am a realist, I am afraid disengagement will happen." Somewhere deep in their hearts, settlers like him and the Hilburgs are coming to accept that reality. Neither the Hilburgs nor the Bentolilas have cooperated with the government agency assigned to find them temporary living quarters and new jobs. Yet they fret about where they will go and complain that the government has done nothing to organize life after evacuation. "Who will hire Sammy at 56?" asks Bryna. "What will happen to my things?" The families refuse to pack anything. "I don't see why I have to make it easy for them," says Bryna. By denying the evacuation for so long, the settlers have turned it into a frightening leap into the unknown.

For more than three decades, Jews like the Hilburgs and Bentolilas lived by the doctrine that successive governments advocated and financed: settling every corner of Greater Israel was the only way to ensure the nation's survival. But that has left them feeling betrayed and increasingly isolated from the Israeli mainstream, which backs Sharon's argument that security can come with separation from the Palestinians. Yet withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is just one hard step along that road, leaving unresolved the vastly larger intermingling of Arab and Jew in the West Bank, a place even more sacred to religious Jews. So the struggle over Gaza may only be a preview of far more divisive and fundamental fights to come.

Haim Gross says he does not intend to quit even Gaza quietly. If the soldiers try to remove his family by force, he says, "we'll lock the house, chain ourselves together and pray." He believes such images of resistance, pitting Jew against Jew, will spur the nation to reject any more withdrawals from occupied land. But when the knock on the door comes at the Hilburg house, the moment Bryna calls "a calamity," her family "will be here at the table, drinking coffee. And when the soldiers arrive, we'll offer them a cup." Sammy breaks in. "And then they have to carry me out." Over at the Bentolila house in Gadid, Gabriel is talking about the need for dignity. "It will break our hearts to leave this place," he says. "So we'll leave it behind all exactly as it is. And we'll take our flags and walk out the gate and join our neighbors and all walk together out of this life. And you'll see us cry."