Word: sand
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With the settlers carted off to hotels all over Israel or to temporary homes built by the government on sand dunes near the town of Ashkelon, Israel will first salvage metal and other materials before destroying the settlements' houses. Much of the rubble will be used to build breakwaters for a new Palestinian port south of Gaza City. Even before the land is cleared, the question is, Who gets the spoils...
...been home to Firouz, his wife Shontal and their four children whose ages range from 12 to 20. It is one of three settlements established in the northern part of the Gaza Strip during the 1980s. Firouz, 44, moved here simply because it evoked memories of the beautiful sand dunes of his childhood in the Israeli town of Ashdod. As a young man he had lived in several kibbutzim and in Ashdod, but it was only the years in Dugit that provided him and his family with tranquility and a feeling of a real home, he says. Given a piece...
...choosing to live in fortress colonies on captured land packed with 1.3 million Palestinians was always folly. But if you look at Gush Katif through the Hilburgs' eyes, it wasn't like that. When Bryna and Sammy first saw their future home in Gaza, there was nothing there but sand. "Sand, sand, more sand," says Bryna. "I loved it," says Sammy. "I thought he was nuts," she says. "But we needed to eat, to buy shoes for the kids, so I said, O.K., we'll look." As new immigrants in 1972 who wanted to live away from the city, they...
...settlement were an empty tract. There were no Arab houses within view, no fences, no military bases, no sign the Jews were entering enemy territory. The 33 families who arrived in Netzer Hazani to occupy 33 small bungalows and work in 33 hothouses newly plunked down on the sand saw themselves as welcome pioneers who would make the desert bloom. They went to shop in Arab Khan Yunis, got haircuts from Palestinian barbers, drank coffee in Palestinian cafés, danced at Palestinian weddings. Although Sammy's view is harsher now, he says, "It never felt then like a hostile environment...
...Hilburgs buckled down to the practical business of turning Gaza's sand into fruitful farmland. They had six children: three are married, two are in the army, and the children profess a range of religious faith, from ultra-Orthodox to secular. Their second son Yochanan was killed in 1997, at age 22, while serving in an élite Israeli commando unit during a raid into Lebanon. The 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...