A Step Forward [??] for One Gush Katif Community, by Hillel Fendel (Israel National News)
Excerpts;
A proposal to expand a central-Israel moshav for families expelled from Netzer Hazani has been submitted. Elsewhere, Katif expellees already settled in Shomeriya say they still have no phone lines.
The expelled families of Gush Katif continue to suffer the ups and downs of the bureaucratic process of building them permanent homes in place of the ones the government destroyed in the summer of 2005.
The families of Netzer Hazani were given reason for hope, while those of Atzmonah-Shomeriya and Shirat Hayam scored a minus.
Netzer Hazani and Yesodot
Following a government decision to build a permanent community for Netzer Hazani, the local planning committee has submitted a proposal to expand Moshav Yesodot for the purpose.Some 50 families from Netzer Hazani, the oldest Gush Katif community, are currently living in temporary quarters in Ein Tzurim, east of Ashkelon. Their new community has now been designated for Yesodot, some ten miles to the northeast – in a bloc of religious communities that have opened their doors to the Gush Katif expellees.
Just past Yesodot is Yad Binyamin, where hundreds of Gush Katif families are living, and where many of them are ultimately to build their permanent homes. And to the west of Yad Binyamin is Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim, where the expelled families of Ganei Tal lived temporarily and to where they are scheduled to return.
In between Yad Binyamin and Kibbutz Chafetz Chaim is Beit Chilkiyah, a moshav populated by Hassidic families.
Anita Tucker is a founding member of Netzer Hazani whose celery farm there was one of the many casualties of the Disengagement in 2005. Arutz-7 asked if she is heartened by what seems to be progress towards rebuilding her destroyed town. “There are two fronts,” she said. “The local plans are being approved at a good rate, and that’s positive. But we need to sign a contract between us, Yesodot and the government – and the government is not yet providing the right terms for either us or for Yesodot.”
Anita explained that the government must pay Yesodot for the land, and pay the contractors to build public buildings and infrastructures at a level befitting a 30-year-old community such as Netzer Hazani.
“For instance,” she said, “each of us paid a hefty sum to build our synagogue, as Jews all over the world do. Should we now have to start all over from scratch?” Similarly with other public buildings, such as cultural centers, a mikvah, a shopping center – the residents say that these buildings were built over the course of years, and it would be unfair for them to have to wait a similar number of years for them to be rebuilt.
The plan is for the government to grant a dunam of land [1000 square meters, nearly a quarter of an acre] to each family, in exchange for the 1.5 dunams they each had in Netzer Hazani. “We agreed to this compromise,” Tucker said.
Each family will have to build their own house with the money given them in compensation for their homes in Gush Katif that were destroyed by the government. Construction costs are generally much higher per meter than that which the Evacuation/Compensation law grants them for their demolished homes.
To read the entire article, click here