NO TURN

Pho tos by Don Cohen

World

Showing Solidarity

E

ighteen sign-bearing and flag-waving demonstrators against Israel's
disengagment plan rallied at the West Bloomfield corner of
Orchard Lake and Maple roads on Aug. 14. The Tisha b'Av
demonstration ran from 4-5 p.m., which corresponded to the time that
Israel closed the gates to the Gaza Strip.
Ezra Drissman of Oak Park helped organize the impromptu demonstra-
tion, which drew mixed reactions from people driving by who were familiar
with their cause.
Akiva Stalmel, holding an Israeli flag in the photo at right, will return to
his home in the Shomron area of the West Bank next week. He is shown
with Drissman, who explained that his sign is meant to express that disen-
gagement will lead to more terrorism.
Also showing their solidarity on the issue were Stephanie August of
White Lake; Rick Collier, visiting from Johannesberg, South Africa; Chana
Miriam Brenner of Oak Park; and Boris and Jacob Shulkin of West
Bloomfield.

— Don Cohen, special writer

uture

For settlers who are leaving Gaza, disorientation and anxiety for the future.

GIL SEDAN AND DINA KRAFT

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Nitzan, Israel
hlomi Tabach was trying to pry
the bronze mezuzah off his
front doorpost with pliers, but
it wouldn't budge.
"Look at that: The mezuzah doesn't
want to leave. It wants to stay in Gush
Katif," said Tabach's mother-in-law,
Yaffa Michaeli, referring to the main
Jewish settlement bloc in the Gaza
Strip where the family had lived for 16
years -- until last week.
With one more yank,. the mezuzah
finally came off.
The Tabach family left the settle-
ment of Gadid last week, ahead of the
Israeli withdrawal. Settlers who hadn't
evacuated as of Monday were given
48-hours notice to leave, on threat of
eviction.
But the Tabach family left a few days
before the evacuation got under way,
rising at dawn to pack final boxes with
their toddler son's toys, taking down
lace curtains and light fixtures. Their
sand-swept front yard was crammed
with furniture, plastic crates and boxes
as they waited for the moving van.
Shlomi Tabach, 30, and his wife,
Ravit, 26, both accountants, have

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8/18
2005

70

Shlomi Tabach stands with his wife, Ravit, in a temporary housing project in
Nitzan on Aug. 13, next to a street sign they brought from Gadid, their former
home in the Gaza Strip.

lived in a small one-story house in
Gadid for two years.
Ravit Tabach moved to the settlement
at age 10 with her family from the
southern Israeli town of Ofakim. Shlomi
Tabach, who grew up secular in the Tel
Aviv suburb of Ramat Hasharon, met
Ravit during their accounting studies
and followed her to Gaza.
Shlomi Tabach doesn't understand
settlers who refused to acknowledge
that the end of their time in Gaza was

fast approaching.
"I think it's a major mistake, because
it's a fact and we need to face up to
it," he said. "I have a wife and son,
and the most important thing is to be
prepared."
He charged that the settlers' leader-
ship "deluded" them into believing that
the withdrawal wouldn't take place.
"We ordered the moving trucks for
Wednesday, but friends suggested that
we postpone the move until

Thursday," Shlomi Tabach said.
"Someone spread the word last week
that a miracle would happen on
Thursday, but then came Thursday,
and there was no miracle."
By Sunday, Aug. 14, the Tabachs
had moved into a mobile home in
Nitzan, a temporary housing project
off the highway leading from the Gaza
Strip north to Tel Aviv. Nitzan was
designed to absorb the bulk of those
evacuated from Gush Katif.
With its rows of mobile homes
planted on a huge plot, Nitzan looks a
bit like one of the ma'abarot, the tran-
sit camps erected in the early days of
the Israeli state to absorb the massive
flow of new immigrants. Unlike the
ma'abarot, however, these mobile
homes have parking spaces, air condi-
tioning and a bit of space. Reflecting
those amenities, they're not called car-
avans, the Israeli term for mobile
homes, but caravillas.
At the Tabachs' new home, one
enters a spacious kitchen with a small
adjacent living room. A hallway leads
to four comfortable bedrooms and two
bathrooms. The windows, however,
look directly into the rooms of the
family next door.
On Aug. 14, just before the formal
evacuation began, Nitzan looked near-