Katif Farmers Tell MKs Their Horror Stories, by Hillel Fendel (Israel National News)
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Yet another Knesset committee session has come and gone, while the ex-farmers of Gush Katif continue to wait for gov’t aid. “Imagine selling your house and not getting paid for 18 months,” one said.
The members of the Knesset’s Audit Committee heard harrowing stories today from former residents of Gush Katif who continue even now, nearly a year and a half later, to suffer the consequences of being thrown out of their homes and lives.
One of the farmers who appeared at the Knesset today is Dudu Michaeli, formerly of Gadid (near N’vei Dekalim) and now of Nitzan. “I’m one of the very few crazy ones who has decided to jump into the water and return to farming,” he told Arutz-7 afterwards, “but the other ones learn from my example and see why it makes no sense. I have 4.5 million shekels [over $1 million] invested in this; do you understand what that means? And yet the government has not provided me with my most basic needs: a permanent electric connection, phone lines, sewage, and the like. How do they expect me to run an international business without a fax?!”
Reminders of Home
Though he grew tomatoes and organic peppers in Gadid, Michaeli now grows mostly organic tomatoes. “But there are frost conditions here that kill off 20% of the produce,” he says about his new location in Zikim, between Gaza and Ashkelon. “Not to mention the Kassams flying all around us. They remind us of the mortar shells we had in Gaza; they’re the only thing we were able to bring with us in toto from Gush Katif.”Though Michaeli wants the government to provide him with weather protection for his greenhouses to protect against frost, and to supply better infrastructures so he can run his business, his main concern is the financial compensation that has not yet arrived:
“Most of the farmers have not received their promised compensation from the government for their homes and businesses. Imagine that you sell your home and then you’re told that you won’t get paid for a year and a half, or more; would you be able to exist like that?”
“The tragedy is,” Dudu continued, “that there are five or six of us crazies who returned to work – but because of the government’s inaction, there are another 200 who simply sit at home and have to answer their wives and children who ask, ‘So what are you going to do today?’ These are men who used to managing thriving businesses that brought money into the country, giving instructions to 20 or 30 workers – and now they sit at home.”
“Even worse is the waste of resources in another way. Just like I have ten Jewish workers working for me in the packing plant, each of these 200 farmers could be employing another ten people. If just 40 more farmers were working now, another 400 people could be working! What a sad waste!”
The Knesset Members were moved by the stories of Michaeli and the others who came to testify, but it is not clear what they can do to alleviate the problems.
Agriculture Minister Shalom Simchon (Labor) said that the Evacuation/Compensation Law must be changed in order to help rehabilitate the expelled farmers. Knesset Member Uri Ariel (National Union) is at work on just such an initiative.
MK Ami Ayalon (Labor) said, “This is a problem of the entire State of Israel, and the Prime Minister – who wants to carry out another withdrawal in 2007 – must come here to give explanations. This is pure Chelm.”
Solution Found for Shirat HaYam
Meanwhile, some progress has been made on a different front. Defense Minister Amir Peretz has approved the construction of a new community for the former residents of the Gush Katif seaside neighborhood of Shirat HaYam. Their new home will be in Maskiyot, located in the Jordan Valley.The area was liberated from Jordan during the Six Day War in 1967, but has never been annexed. The Palestinian Authority demands it, as well as the entire Jordan Valley, Samaria, Judea and eastern Jerusalem, as part of the area in which it hopes to establish its state. The new residents are aware that they may face another expulsion, if Olmert continues to consider additional withdrawals.
Maskiyot used to be the site of a Nachal army base, and now houses a boarding school that prepares high school graduates for military service. The Defense Ministry has also approved – more than a year after it implied it would – the construction of 30 houses there. These would house some 20 families from Shirat HaYam and ten from other destroyed Gush Katif towns. Construction is set to begin in two weeks’ time.
The relocation of Shirat HaYam to the Jordan Valley appears, on the face of it, to be a violation of the Sharon government’s promises to the United States not to establish new towns in Judea and Samaria.
For more on this story: click on this report by Jerusalem Post’s Tovah Lazaroff.
Excerpts;
Disengagement has cost former Gaza farmer Ronit Balaban NIS 5 million, her long-standing clients and her pride.
She said the government had failed to provide sufficient compensation to repay her losses from the move.
The difference between what she needed to reestablish her enterprise and what she received, Balaban told The Jerusalem Post, was NIS 5 million.
Balaban, who ran a Mediterranean plant business in Ganei Tal for 23 years, was not among those who refused to deal with the government prior to disengagement.
Balaban moved her hothouses to 35 dunams, or about 8.75 acres, of replacement land in Moshav Mavki’im.
Playing by the rules has not helped her rebuild her business, despite the efforts of many volunteers and the distribution company that has helped market her plants in Europe.
She missed the first planting season after disengagement entirely.
It was only in the last few weeks that she has been able to produce marketable plants.
Meanwhile, her clients have moved on.
She has also incurred additional costs as a result of the move from Gaza.
She now has a one-hour commute from her modular home in Yad Binyamin to the hothouses.
Balaban cannot afford to build a permanent home, because she has spent all her compensation on the business.
“Now I have no home,” said Balaban. She doesn’t know what she will do when the two-year contract on her modular home runs out.
Balaban can’t sleep at night for fear she will never get out of debt. “It shouldn’t be this way,” she said.