Middle East: Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip feel betrayed by Ariel Sharon. Nuala Haughey spent time with some of them in Gush Katif
If Anita Tucker, a Jewish Gaza Strip settler, was to pack her bags every time there was a hullabaloo about evacuating its controversial settlements, she would have been living out of her suitcase for almost 30 years.
So it's hardly surprising if the cheery 58-year-old celery farmer and grandmother seems unfazed by the political furore prompted by the Israeli premier's startling announcement this week that he has ordered planning to begin for the evacuation of the strip's settlements.
That Ariel Sharon, a patron of the settler movement and its staunchest ally, could even contemplate unilaterally turning the strip over to the Palestinians was greeted by Gaza's 8,000 settlers as a gesture of utter betrayal.
That the wily politician's stance may be little more than a cynical attempt to deflect attention from the corruption scandals which threaten to terminate his government is immaterial to the religious Jews of the coastal strip, who believe that God bequeathed this land to them and man cannot take it from them.
"Every year they drop a bombshell like this, and journalists come and do interviews, and every year we are still here," says Brooklyn-born Ms Tucker, standing in one of her 14 greenhouses amid rows of celery destined for Jewish markets in Europe and the US.
As a sign of her confidence that this is another false alarm, she is planning next year's crops, while a playground has just been completed in her settlement of Neter Hazani, one of 17 in Gush Katif, Gaza's main settlement block.
Unlike their West Bank counterparts whose hilltop locations offer a natural defence, the settlers of Gaza's flat desert plain are exposed to Palestinian attackers.
Locals say 3,000 rockets have fallen on Gush Katif since the outbreak of the current Palestinian intifada in September 2000, with more than 9,000 shooting incidents.
However, these attacks seem to strengthen rather than weaken the resolve of the religious settlers, who say any withdrawal would show weakness and reward Islamic terrorism.
On Thursday morning, when The Irish Times visited the strip, the road from Israel proper into the Gush Katif block was temporarily sealed off following an alert that three Palestinian gunmen were in the vicinity.
"This is the daily life here, and we are here because we feel a mission; we know what exactly is our duty in this area," said Eran Sternberg, a settlers' spokesman who has himself been shot at three times.
The dangerous highway leading to Gush Katif winds through rubbish-strewn sand dunes punctuated with Israeli army lookout posts.
In the distance is the blue Mediterranean Sea and the towns and villages of the strip's 1.3 million stateless Palestinian residents who are virtually imprisoned in the enclave in cramped, impoverished and unsanitary conditions.
By contrast, Gaza's settlers live in handsome, red-roofed houses in spacious estates, surrounded by fences and heavily guarded by Israeli soldiers. They have lush gardens, shops, play areas, schools and kindergartens and even their own Yeshiva.
The settlers constitute less than 1 per cent of the strip's total population, but occupy at least one-fifth of its land and take the lion's share of its valuable water resources.
About a third of Gush Katif's settlers make a living from irrigated hothouse farming (Katif means harvest), growing everything from geraniums to vegetables and herbs using hi-tech methods.
A glossy brochure produced by the regional council boasts that Gush Katif agriculture has "turned an empty, desolate desert into a flourishing garden. Agriculture here is not just a vocation, but expresses a holistic world view including a profound link to this holy soil and our rights to that soil."
Ms Tucker used to hire local Palestinian labourers, believing it "crazy" that some of her neighbours hired workers from Thailand when "my next door neighbours were starving". However, her resolve began to weaken following the murder of three locals by Palestinians in recent years.
"Last year a well-loved local rabbi was killed, and something inside me went. I felt I was shelling out money for terrorism," she says. Now she has three Thai labourers working for her.
The former psychology teacher has fond memories of the early days in the strip, which she moved to with her husband in 1975 upon the recommendation of the government. This was just prior to the intense period of civilian settlement of the Gaza Strip, which was seized by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War along with the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
It was Ariel Sharon, as chief of the Israeli defence forces' southern command in 1970, who began a campaign to rid Gaza of Palestinian resistance.
The strip was sealed off by a security fence, and Mr Sharon embarked on his plan to establish "Jewish fingers" in the area, isolating Arab communities and minimising the possibility of unified political action.
His statement this week that it would be better for Israel if there were no Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip severely undermines the legitimacy of the settler project, which is already widely viewed as illegal under international law.
Mr Sharon did not give details of his proposal, which envisages relocating the residents of 17 of the strip's 21 settlements, when he told Haaretz newspaper: "I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza."
Gaza does not have the same religious or emotional significance as the much larger West Bank, and opinion polls consistently show that most Israelis would support the evacuation of the strip's settlements.
Two separate newspaper polls this week showed 59 and 52 per cent support for such a plan, reflecting a widespread view that the Gaza settlements are an unnecessary security burden.
The resentment over the fact that young soldiers are being killed defending a tiny number of settlers is particularly acute when it comes to Gaza. Since 2000, 15 soldiers have died defending the highly-controversial and isolated settlement of Netzarim in the northern half of strip where some 50 families live.
Gush Katif's settlers' council has sprung into action to resist any evacuation plans by lobbying the right-wing members of Sharon's coalition government and the two far-right parties which make up the current coalition. They have also gone on a PR offensive.
In the regional council's offices in the Neveh Dekalim settlement on Thursday, foreign and Israeli journalists were invited to watch two videos in which cute five-year-old boys in decorative skullcaps described the familiar sound of rocket attacks on their playschool, the silent approach followed by a deafening "boom".
The affable mayor of Gush Katif, Avner Shimoni, dismissed Mr Sharon's political ability to enforce an evacuation of the bulk of the strip's settlers.
"We are religious people and we believe in God, and that God gave this land to the religious people to be here. His \ friends from Likud will not give him the power to do it."
Those opposed to evacuating settlements in Gaza may constitute a minority, but they are a large, solid, influential and ideologically-determined minority.
While the removal of Gaza's settlements would be a huge and expensive logistical challenge, some non-ideological settlers would undoubtedly be prepared to leave the enclave if adequate compensation was offered. While new settler homes are currently being constructed and planned in Gush Katif, in Ms Tucker's settlement a least half a dozen houses near the perimeter fence were uninhabited. The local Palm Beach hotel is abandoned, its chalets occupied by migrant workers.
Ms Tucker says she does not see herself as part of the problem in the region. Peace would not be achieved by her moving 2km away to a home inside Israel proper. Rather, the place would become a "hotbed of Islamic terror" threatening the whole world.
She said her parents were driven from Germany, her grandparents from Poland and her great grandparents from Austria-Hungary. "Now Sharon comes in and says, 'you'll be a refugee. I'll chase you from your home'. It doesn't seem right, and I don't think it will help bring peace because peace means people living together."