HEAVY Heart

Hearing and seeing the Nitzanim evacuees

up close and personal.

SARRA ZACKS
Jewish Renaissance Media

Jerusalem
s the destruction of Israeli
cities — and morale — got
under way, the question for
many of us was what could we do. We
tried to stop, stall and block. We tried
prayer and letters. We tried protests,
rallies and marches.
What more? Block the Kissufim
Junction into the area? Sneak into Gush
Katif? I hated to admit it, but I knew at
most, it would just push off the eventu-
ality by a day or two. By that point,
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was
not going to change his mind, be over-
thrown, have his gov-
ernment fall or quit. So
what could I, little me,
do now? Should I just
cash in my chips, say I marched, sang,
cried, laughed, traveled, wore orange,
bought orange, spoke to people, and
now I'm done? Am I going to live out
the rest of the evacuation away from it
all in Jerusalem, where I can pretend life
is normal while soldiers, parents, chil-
dren, residents, visiting protesters and
police a few kilometers away are each
making decisions that will haunt them
for the rest of their lives?
I thought about all the different
options I had at this point. My deci-
sion: go to Nitzanim, the area some of
the Gush Katif evacuees were sent. I

A

DAN BARON
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jerusalem
fter months of focusing on its
withdrawal from the Gaza
Strip, Israel returned to an all-
too-familiar experience this week:
Palestinian terrorism.
A suicide bomber wounded 48 peo-
ple Sunday at the central bus station
in the southern Israeli city of
Beersheva, the first such attack since
the evacuation of settlements from
Gaza and the northern West Bank ear-
lier this month.
It could have been bloodier: The
bomber was blocked from boarding a
bus thanks to the vigilance of two

A

went with friends to help make the
move/transition/expulsion/destruction
just a tad bit smoother. We brought
candies and bubbles for the kids, we
were ready to listen to the teens and
help the adults.
As you drive into Nitzanim, you
notice nice, cute houses. The houses
are yellow with red roofs. As you reach
the beautiful green traffic circle with
pretty flowers planted, you can follow
the signs to the area office. In the
office, you can get a nice map of the
area with each house plotted out.
You can drive through the neighbor-
hood and see B'nei Akiva madrichim
(aides) in their laced-up shirts running
activities for young kids. You will see
people carrying boxes into
their little, cute houses. If
you walk into the houses,
you will be greeted with a
smile. They will ask you where you are
from. They will be terribly insulted if
you don't sit for a minute and eat or
drink something.
If you left right then, you'd leave
feeling that everything is going great.
If you stay, and talk to people you'll
find a different story. You'll find the
story of the 11-year-old girl who does
not know how to get in touch with
her friends or where they are. You'll
find the story of the 15-year-old boy
who does not know which school to
choose or how to go about choosing
one. You'll find the story of the 2

TART

-

Sarra Zacks, 26, works in Jerusalem with Eretz Um'loah, a post-high school
program offering a year of informal education combined with community serv-
ice work. She is the daughter of Dr. Joel and Linda Zacks of Southfield.

year-old girl who cries herself to sleep
at night because she wants - to go
home. You'll find the story of the 28-
year-old father who can't fathom how
others can put up flags already. You'll
find the 19-year-old boy who needed
to just get away from this fake life; he
borrowed his parents' car and went to
Kfar Saba.
You'll meet the mother of seven who
feels like a prisoner because she can't
take her hat off in her own home,
because she is now so close to the
neighbors. You'll hear about all the stuff
from a 400-square-meter house that
didn't fit into a 90-square-meter car-
avilla. You'll hear an 18-year-old girl
who can't describe her house to her
friend looking for it because it looks
like all the others.
You'll have parents cry on your
shoulders because they don't know
what else to do. You'll be able to pass
tissues to your new friends who are
crying as they watch on TV, neighbors

Bomber Strikes

Focus again shifts to terror in Israel.

guards who chased him away. Both
were seriously hurt. Islamic Jihad
claimed responsibility for the attack.
Those who opposed the Gaza pull-
out said the Beersheva attack proved
that the withdrawal had emboldened
Palestinian terrorists. But the govern-
ment, which on Sunday approved a
deal to have Egypt police Gaza's
southern border to Egypt, placed the
blame on the Palestinian Authority.
"There are groups and individuals
who are trying to disturb to the
process of peace," Vice Prime Minister

Shimon Peres told reporters. "Now we
shall draw the necessary conclusions.
We hope that the Palestinian
Authority will do likewise, because
terror is damaging, not only to the
security of Israel but also to the des-
tiny of the Palestinians."
P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas
broadcast a statement on Israel Radio
assuring that the truce he declared
with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon in February would stay.
"Now that Israel has withdrawn, the
way forward is clear," President Bush

being pulled out of their homes and
from their shul. You can go for a walk
with a mother of five who asks how to
explain it all to .her kids. You can sit
with some of the evacuees who try to
come to terms with what happened.
You can try and comfort two young
siblings who are scared now of new
people, because they might try and
take away this house from them, too.
You can talk to a young grandmother
who speaks with love of what they
built and cries as she tries to come to
terms with the facts that she can't go
back. You can help paint a young boy's
room orange, because he doesn't want
to go to sleep and forget.
Mostly, if you stayed long enough,
you leave with a heavy heart because
you would know that in this quaint
cute yellow/red house community,
there is so much pain. And while you
were able to put a bandage to their
wound, it was like throwing a stick
into running water to start a dam. ❑

said in his weekly radio address
Saturday. "The . Palestinians must show
the world that they will fight terrorism
and govern in a peaceful way."
In harsh rhetoric, Abbas condemned
the Beersheva bombing as terror, but
also suggested that Israel had provoked
it with a military raid last week that
killed five Islamic Jihad gunmen in the
West Bank city of Tulkarm.
At the same time, Israel and Egypt
reached agreement on a deal that will
allow Israel to relinquish control of
Gaza's border with Egypt. Some 750
Egyptian troops will be posted along
the eight-mile frontier to stop arms
smuggling from Sinai to Palestinian
terrorists in Gaza. The Israeli Cabinet
approved the plan by a vote of 18-2. ❑

J14

9/ 1
2005

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