MIDDLE EAST: One municipality has drafted an ambitious plan to be implemented once Israeli settlers leave, reports Nuala Haughey in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip
Abed Qannan earns less than €10 a day working on a Jewish settler's vegetable farm in the southern Gaza Strip, tending to crops of celery, onions and mint destined for export.
His workplace is only several miles away, but a world apart, from his neighbourhood, the cramped and unsanitary refugee camp in Khan Younis, the second-largest Palestinian urban centre in the Gaza Strip.
"It's a very nice place," says Abed (34) of the Gadid settlement, one of 21 in the Gaza Strip which Israel says some 8,000 settlers must evacuate this summer, or be removed by force.
"There are organised streets, very very nice and very clean houses with gardens. There are playgrounds and trees on the streets, synagogues and schools."
Without Abed's earnings his 18-member extended family would rely on UN aid. But he has been told he will be laid off in 10 days' time because his employers are winding down their businesses in advance of the pullout, due to start in mid-August.
"I'm seeing with my own eyes that the settlers are preparing to leave," he says, sipping sugared tea infused with sage on the shaded roof terrace of his family home after a day's work in the settlement. "Some of them have removed their greenhouses. All of them feel angry. Really, they don't want to leave. All the workers are feeling this."
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, on a visit to the region this week, announced that Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to demolish the settlers' 1,600 homes, ending months of speculation about the fate of the properties.
The Israelis have undertaken to tear down the houses while the Palestinians will be paid to clear away the rubble. Israel says it will remove sensitive structures such as synagogues and transfer Jewish graves, while leaving infrastructure such as electricity plants, commercial greenhouses, schools and a small industrial zone.
The agreement has symbolic importance for Israelis, who will not have to swallow the bitter pill of seeing abandoned Jewish homes adorned with flags of the Islamic militant group Hamas, which is heralding the pullout as a victory for its bloody resistance. On a practical level, it also means Palestinian planners will be left with a largely greenfield site on which to start afresh with housing and infrastructure more suitable for their citizens' needs.
Israel seized the Gaza Strip along with the West Bank during the 1967 Six Day War, and the 1970s saw the civilian settlements start to mushroom, in violation of international law.
Today the settlers constitute less than 1 per cent of the Strip's 1.3 million residents, but control about one-fifth of its land. Their attractive detached or semi-detached villas have whitewashed walls, red tiled roofs and front lawns.
The clustered settlement blocks are fenced off by high concrete walls and guarded by Israeli soldiers in fortified watch towers which overlook wide buffer zones - dismal no-man's lands where Palestinian homes and greenhouses have been razed to remove shelter for militants, who still manage to fire lobbies of home-made Qassam rockets at the settlements.
Khan Younis municipality welcomes the decision to demolish the settlers' western-style homes, which it says are much too small for Palestinians who live in large extended family groups of two or three generations.
The municipality has drafted an ambitious plan for the area once the settlers leave, which urban planner Hatem Abu Eltayef lays out on a table in his office.
"From the urban planning point of view the settlements are not designed to our needs," he explains. "All the settlements are designed for security, with bottleneck entrances and exits and it's difficult to merge this structure with our city structure. We plan to increase the number of roads and allow freer access to the beach."
The plan shows shaded areas destined for low- and high-density housing for up to 200,000 people, agricultural development, recreation facilities, restaurants, a university and sports complex and beach-front chalets and hotels, all of which are to be funded by private investors or international donors.
The 50,000 residents of Khan Younis refugee camp are mostly descendants of families displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war from areas that are now part of the Jewish state. They can glimpse the shimmering Mediterranean Sea beyond the settlements and feel the salty breezes that whip fine sand around their roads.
Abu Eltayef points on the plan to the main road running westward from the camp, passing through the settlements and sloping down to the beach. Locals cannot take this road to the beach, which the settlers are free to enjoy.
"I tried to make here a wide street with green areas, like the Champs-Élysées," he says of his plans to transform the road currently lined with bullet-ridden houses and overlooked by an Israeli army watchtower.
Abed Qannan's father and brothers used to be fishermen, setting off from the shore at Khan Younis to catch sardines, tuna and shark for sale in the local markets. But after the outbreak of the intifada, the violent Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation which began in September 2000, Israel stopped allowing Palestinians to fish from Khan Younis.
Abed dreams that after disengagement he will get a bank loan to fix up his $20,000 fishing boat, which is languishing in dry dock in Gaza City's harbour, its parts raided by locals. Someone in the group points out that taking a bank loan is haram - a sin - under Islam. "Really, I have no choice," says Abed. "Allah sees and knows all and he will forgive us."