Memories, not just a room
צילום: אורי מרמלשטיין
My own room
In her ongoing personal journal, 17-year-old Renana Marmelstein explains why evacuation is not same as moving apartments and what her home means to her
Many people seriously ask me: 'Renana, what's your problem? You're basically moving apartments. Everyone does it."
So in response, I want to describe for you my life and my house, where I have lived for 18 years (and where my parents have lived for 30 years), and then afterwards, tell me if you can honestly compare evacuation to moving apartments.
I'll start with the most personal – my room. The truth is that it is quite plain (and I have no complaints). There's a bed, closet, chest and bookshelf – but for me, my room has everything. I've had my room for nearly 18 years, since the day I was born.
No one in the family has succeeded in moving me to another room, and even when I tried a better, more private room upstairs, it didn't stick.
All my bad and good memories are with me in my room, and it is very special.
My wall of memories
About three years ago, while studying for a test, my friend Tipi and I went nuts. She moved the cloth drawing on my wall and started to write lots of different things we wanted to remember forever.
Since that day, it became a tradition. Everyone who would come to my apartment would write his or her experiences and memories of Gush Katif – and now you expect to move the wall? Demolishing my home and my room will also be demolishing my best memories.
(To those who say that the house should be given to the Arabs, I say that giving away my memories to my enemies is even worse.)
That I chose to write on my wall was because I thought it would stay forever. I never thought someone would take it from me.
Next year, I do national service in Tel Aviv. If, God forbid, disengagement is carried out, to where will I return? I will feel a stranger and out of place everywhere.
You have to understand that a home is not an apartment; a home has roots. It is not something you trade in. A home is a community, it's all of Ganei Tal, it's Gush Katif. What the government is doing is taking us from our community.
