World

RESPONSE

from page 57

Disengagement

Debatable History

Bible unclear whether Gaza is part of the land of Israel.

•"Israel is not leaving Gaza
because of a peace agreement or
because there is a genuine partner
on the other side.
Israel is leaving
because it is what
Israel requires
right now.
"Gaza costs too
much in economic
and in human
terms. Just under
8,000 Jews live in Moskowitz
22 settlements
surrounded by
1.5 million Palestinians. It
requires 25,000 soldiers to defend
them. So I believe withdrawal
means more easily defendable bor-
ders, and that's important for
Israel and its security and its safe-
ty. The IDF will better be able to
protect its citizens when a border
is more defined and without wor-
rying about what settlers need
there.
"But the reasons also go beyond
security. Israel leaving is the only
way she can preserve her demo-
cratic and Jewish character. I don't
think anyone would want to sacri-
fice Israel's democracy for the sake
of the land.
"Gaza doesn't have the biblical
connection, the biblical legacy
that the West Bank has. In the
West Bank, one could argue,
Jewish history began there, but for
most of our history, the Philistines
controlled Gaza, despite the fact
that it was included in the Bible's
promised territory,.
"This is an important step for
Israel to be taking right now, and
I'm glad Israel is doing it, but I
have great concern of how it will
go. My friends from Israel are e-
mailing me constantly. My close
friend has a son who is right now
deployed in Gaza and is part of
the disengagement. • It saddens me,
and it tugs at my soul knowing
what Israel has been through and
what the future entails."

— Rabbi Michael Moskowitz,
Temple Shir Shalom, West
Bloomfield

8/11

2005

58

DINA KRAFT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Tel Aviv

odern Israeli settlement in
the Gaza Strip resumed
only after the 1967 Six-
Day War, but even with those settle-
ments set to be evacuated, Jewish roots
in the sandy strip of land where Egypt,
Israel and the Mediterranean Sea meet
run deep.
Opinions differ on whether the area
was or was not included in the land of
Israel conquered by the ancient
Israelites in the Bible; Samson is the
only biblical Israelite noted for having
set foot there.
After a contentious debate, Israel's
Knesset voted last year to unilaterally
withdraw from the Gaza Strip and
evacuate the 9,000 or so Jewish settlers
who live in suburban-style settlements
there.
The settler population is dwarfed by
the 1.3 million Palestinians who live
in densely populated Gaza, which is
25 miles long and just six miles wide.
During biblical times, Gaza was
part of the land promised to the
Jews by God but never part of the
land actually conquered and inhabit-
ed by them, said Nili Wazana, a lec-
turer on Bible studies and the histo-
ry of the Jewish people at Hebrew
University.
"On almost everything, you will
find an opinion and an opposite opin-
ion. It was not a homogenous text. It
was not written at the same time, and
there are competing ideologies,"
Wazana said. "The question of Gaza is
one of the issues where you will find
different opinions."
Most Israelis saw neither historic nor
strategic reasons for staying in Gaza.
But to Yigal Kamietsky, the rabbi of
Gush Katif, the main Jewish settler
bloc there, Gaza is an integral part of
biblical Israel.
"Gaza is part of the land of Israel,
no less than Tel Aviv and BrLei Brak,"
he said. "There is no doubt it is part
of the borders." He said that not only
was it considered a mitzvah to settle
there, but that "if we were not here, I
am not sure the State of Israel would
still be there."
Kamietsky said Jews in the Gaza set-
tlements act as a buffer for those Jews
living within Israel's pre-1967 borders.
Indeed, some Israeli officials fear that

Israeli Talya Eluz, left, sits with her friend and neighbor Ravit Cohen and some
of their children in the living room of Eluz's house in Elei Sinai in the Gaza
Strip last January.

once Israeli troops and settlers are
withdrawn from the strip, Palestinian
terrorists may concentrate on building
rockets that can hit the Israeli city
Ashkelon, north of Gaza.
Kamietsky notes that historically
Gaza was often caught in the crossfire
of war.
The one period when Jews
appeared to have sovereignty over
Gaza was during the time of
Hasmonean rule, when the Jewish
King Yochanan — whose brother was
Judah the Maccabee — captured the
area in 145 C.E.
Haggai Huberman — who has writ-
ten extensively on the history of
Jewish settlement in Gaza aver the
centuries and is writing a history of
the Jews in Gush Katif — maintains
that the Jews who lived there always
considered themselves residents of the
land of Israel.
He says that Jews have lived on and
off in Gaza since the time of Roman
rule, their settlement following a pat-
tern of expulsion during times of war,
and conquest and return during more
peaceful periods. The remains of an
ancient synagogue found in Gaza date
to around 508 C.E. Its mosaic floor,
unearthed by archaeologists, is now
displayed in the Israel Museum in
Jerusalem.
There reportedly was a large Jewish
community living in the area when
the Muslims invaded in the seventh
century. The Jews were noted for their
skills as farmers and for making wine
in their vast vineyards.

After the Spanish Inquisition in
1492, some Spanish and Portuguese
Jews fled to Gaza. They abandoned
the area when Napoleon's army
marched through but later returned in
the early 1800s.
When the first wave of Zionist set-
tlers arrived in the region at the end of
the 19th century, a group of 50 fami-
lies moved to Gaza City. According to
Huberman, they established good rela-
tions with local Arabs.
The settlers stayed until they were
expelled in 1914 — along with Gaza's
entire Arab population — by the
Ottoman Turks during World War I.
The Jews returned in 1920. But ten-
sions simmered with Arab and Jewish
nationalisms on the rise, and the rela-
tions with local Arabs began to sour.
The major Jewish presence in Gaza
on the eve of Israel's War of
Independence in 1948 was a kibbutz
called Kfar Darom, set up in 1946. It
was evacuated during the war and was
among the first places to be resettled
by Jews after 1967. Initially inhabited
by Israeli soldiers from the Nahal
brigade, it soon evolved into one of
several civilian settlements established
in the 1970s as the settler movement
gained strength.
Any attempt to downplay Jewish
roots in the Gaza Strip "is part of the
disinformation being spread," said
Eran Steinberg, a spokesman for the
Gush Katif settlements.
For her part, Wazana said present-
day debates over territory mirror those
in the Bible. ❑