Eli

Thursday 13th of Av 5765
Posted on 16 Tevet 5766 (15 January 2006) after visiting Amona and worrying about Amona, Chevron, and all the other places.



David Rapport drove to an intersection where people were passing on the way from their homes in Gush Katif. The intersection was Tzomet Gevim just outside of Sderot.
Usually there were two people in the car, the homeowner and a helper, with the rest of the car containing whatever small amount of their property from their house that they managed to fit into the car. The rest of the family were taken out on buses, and the rest of their property that would fit in two containers might make it into the containers if they didn't get stolen or damaged.

Here is a car stopping to speak with us the people at the side of the road, holding signs and shouting "Gibborim" - Heros:


And here passes a truck with two containers being driven by a smiling Arab driver, but what are all the police (YASAM - special forces) here for?


And here we are, strung out along the road holding signs:


There were two kinds of buses. One type that was half empty with smashed windows containing alternating rows of police and rows of citizens. These were people who had been dragged out of their homes on to the buses. These buses didn't stop, they just whizzed by.

The other kind of bus was full and didn't seem to have much or any police. These were the people who didn't want to be dragged and had gotten on to the buses themselves. These buses stopped and we were able to sing to them a bit and throw them candies. This is the back of one of those buses with a sign "We were expelled from our homes. We shall yet return.":


As I walked towards the bus I passed another car that had stopped and was being greeted. This car seemed to be driven by a daughter with her father:


After attaching a sign to the car the father and daughter prepared to continue on their way away from their home, while a policeman impatiently honked at them for stopping:


In the other direction they were bringing in D9 tractors to destroy the houses:


A crowd started forming in front of the truck with the D9 and I saw this scene;
must be an undercover cop:


When I got closer to the crowd I saw that there were police around a man on the ground and his wife was by his head. The police carried him away amid a lot of shouting from his wife and the crowd and many little scuffles between the police and the people. I took lots of photos and movie clips of it but I didn't know what was going on. When I got home and looked through it all and thought about it I realized why all the police had been around and what had happened. They had expected us to do something useful and lie down on the road to foul up the traffic expelling people from their homes and bringing in the destruction equipment, but all that most of us did was sing songs and hold signs. One man actually lay down on the road to block the D9 and instead of everyone else following suit, people had shouting matches with the police, while I took pictures. Here is what my camera could see of the man (his arms) while he was being lifted by the police, and then as he was carried away struggling:

Police shove his wife away:


After people complained that the MAGAV police weren't wearing tags, they were told to put them on:

After that excitement with the man in an ambulance or the police bus (an Egged bus), we went back to stand by the road and shout and sing. Here's Chagi Ben-Artzi with his new Israeli flag:


We greet another bus of refugees. A boy tries to get candies into the window:


Then a car showed up with a mother and son. We sang to them and she gave a speech thanking us. Everyone was crying. I took a photo of the girl next to me crying while somebody else took a photo of me crying and then the mother rummaged around in her car for their video camera and had her crying son film all of us singing and crying.


Later another bus of MAGAV gendarmerie showed up and we went over to talk to them face to face (Panim El Panim). Afterwards we drove on our way and saw some youth trying to walk through the fields to get to Gush Katif. Afterwards we drove to Ashkelon to a "vacation village" and met some people arriving from Gush Katif, stunned, some of them already trying to get set up without their property, without jobs, with nothing for the children to do, with no washing machines. We davened Mincha and Arvit with them. One man anounced that the men should only cry in private.