jerusalem | Yossi Dayan of Nisanit is resigned to moving out of the Gaza Strip. But he fears his temporary home will not be ready before the soldiers come to evict him.
Twice a day, he visits his temporary home in Kibbutz Karmiya and leaves with a sinking feeling in his heart. “I do not see a single house ready,” he said.
Dayan heads the largest group — 150 families — that is leaving northern Gaza.
Sitting in her living room in nearby Elei Sinai, Shosh Schatz is steps behind Dayan. She doesn’t know where she is going. She hasn’t even packed a single box.
Neither she nor Dayan are among those who deny that the government intends to evacuate Gaza and four northern Samaria communities next month or intend to resist.
In contrast to many of their neighbors, they believed early on that disengagement was a reality and began planning for it. They were among those who last August and September met with disengagement authority head Yonatan Bassi seeking alternatives.
Schatz, a high school teacher and mother of three, starts work on Aug. 15. “By July, I thought I would be settled somewhere else,” she said.
She represents some 25 families from Elei Sinai still seeking a group move from the government. This week, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced in the Knesset and then again on a tour of temporary homes, that the government was ready for disengagement.
Television cameras showed him viewing a modular kitchen in the community of Nitzan. “I asked you to start working, and I must say that you really have worked,” he said, expressing his satisfaction.
In the Knesset, Bassi said, “Every day the disengagement authority receives 20 to 30 requests for compensation from residents of Gush Katif and northern Samaria.” To date, he has received some 360 requests, out of 1,800 families.
He also announced the government’s intention to purchase Golf Village, a defunct golf project near the sea in Ashkelon, which can hold approximately 400 families. Led by Dayan, 150 Nisanit families — half the community — have already signed on to the project. The government has also signed three group deals, totaling 86 Gaza settlers.
By this count, 596 families — close to a third of the evacuees — have signed deals with the government.
But while one group of 38 families, also from Elei Sinai and Nisanit, has already announced it is ready to move, Dayan and Schatz were less optimistic.
“I’m not just worried for myself, I also have a responsibility to the people in my group,” Dayan said.