Word: jewish
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Deep in the heart of the Gaza Strip, the Hilburgs are pretending to have a normal day. Life in the Jewish settlement bloc of Gush Katif is out of the ordinary at the best of times, but this is the worst of times. Yet Bryna, 55, defiantly acts as if nothing has changed, washing the dishes, tidying the living room, settling down to write end-of-year reports on her speech-therapy students. Out in their nearby hothouses, her husband Sammy, 56, is resolutely prepping the sandy soil for the next vegetable crop. But their bleak eyes, full of anger...
Beginning this week, their hamlet of Netzer Hazani and the other 20 Jewish settlements that occupy more than one-third of the Gaza Strip will be ghost towns, the Hilburg home of 26 years reduced to rubble, the very purpose of their lives stripped away. Under the controversial policy Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls disengagement, some 8,700 Israeli residents in Gaza and another 674 in the West Bank must leave their homes or face removal by force. The plan has the support of the international community, including the Bush Administration, which sees the withdrawal as a small but vital...
...devoted few, including Gaza residents like the Hilburgs, the abandonment of the settlements represents a shameful, even sinful betrayal of the ideological foundations of the Jewish state. As the date for the pullout has neared, activists from outside the strip have blocked highways, spread nails on roads and sought to crowd into the settlements to thwart the evacuation with their bodies. Israeli police estimate that more than 2,500 have smuggled themselves into Gush Katif; some plan to test Sharon's vow to use the army to remove any who try to resist the evacuation, pressing their slogan, "Jews...
...center of the rancor are families like the Hilburgs, who believed they were doing their part to advance the Jewish enterprise by settling in territory they regard as part of Eretz Yisrael. Like a surprising number of other Gaza settlers, the Hilburgs are Americans who followed their ideals to Israel, giving up a comfortable future in the U.S. for the rigors of pioneer life. Now they are being ordered to abandon that life by the same Israeli leaders who had made settling the occupied territories an article of faith. For those like the Hilburgs, it's not just about policy...
...Hilburgs defied family members who urged that Yochanan receive a military funeral in Jerusalem. "He loved it here," says Bryna. "We decided he would be buried here, where he lived, where we can get to him." Now the Hilburgs face a second heartbreak: the Gush Katif cemetery housing 48 Jewish graves will have to be evacuated too. "They have to get out every single particle," says Bryna as she stares at her own hands, "every joint and finger and toe that has fallen away when there are no ligaments left." The Israeli government has said it will remove those graves...