Gaza evacuees face eviction

Disengagement Authority chief tells evacuees: At the end of the week we will stop funding your stay at hotels; evacuees: We are being evicted again without thought about where we will hold Passover Seder

Guy Mei-Tal |Published: 04.06.06 , 09:24

The last of the Gush Katif evacuees staying at hotels will leave their accommodations on Friday, the day the State will cease funding their stay, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Thursday.

In their place, the hotels are preparing to host tourists arriving for Passover.

The Passover Seder will be celebrated by Gush Katif members in cara-villa mobile homes and temporary sites prepared for them. These cara-villas will be their new and temporary home from Friday onwards, until the completion of permanent homes in the Lachish District in southern Israel.

The eviction announcement was received by the 120 families with mixed feelings.

Evacuees are fed up with the crowded quarters in the hotels, but they fear that budgetary considerations have become more prominent than questions of comfort. Most of all, the evacuees are furious over the fact that they are being cleared now, just days before Passover.

"They have no conscience. Again we are being evacuated without consideration," said David Yamin, a former Elei Sinai resident who was housed in a southern kibbutz but left because of Qassam rocket attacks.

"Where will I and my family go? Where will we spend the night and where will we celebrate the night of Passover? We are not going back to the kibbutz until we feel safe. The Disengagement Authority only cares about its money, not about us. The main thing is to get rid of us and forget about everything," Yamin said.

He also charged that the holiday resort said that families would stop receiving meals from Friday onwards. Another consideration for the families, who prefer to delay the move until after Passover, is the short time they have to make their homes kosher for Passover and to cook for the Passover meal, in a home empty of furniture.

The Disengagement Authority is furious over the comments and says that another 150 families across the country live in hotels, hostels, and holiday resorts, but the housing contract ends at this time. Every additional day, the Disengagement Authority says, will cost a lot of extra money.

"They are indulging themselves at the expense of the Disengagement Authority," a Disengagement Authority source charged. "We don't have the option of continuing to arrange temporary accommodations for them. It's a situation of who will break first. It's not up to us anymore."

"Now it's their turn to show responsibility and move to the cara-villas. It's clear we won't evacuate them by force, but without doubt the time has arrived for them to move to orderly homes and live as human beings, not in inhuman conditions like in the holiday resort in Ashkelon. A family that doesn't want to leave will, from now on, have to pay for staying at the hotels and guest houses," the source added.