Rise, fall, rumored return: Gaza's Gush Katif remembered in Jerusalem

For over 30 years, Jews lived and thrived in Gaza in a community of 8,000 people called Gush Katif; but when Israel pulled out of the territory in 2005, the residents were forced to leave.

The story lives on at the Gush Katif Museum, located at 5 Shaarei Zedek Street. Though founded in 2008, it has seen a resurgence of interest and visitors since Oct. 7, given the connection to the Oslo Accords, which set the stage for the disengagement and, many say, the Hamas massacre nine months ago.

“The question they [visitors] all ask is, ‘What is going to happen after the war? Are we going to go back and establish the settlements?’” said Avner Franklin, the museum guide and groups coordinator.

The museum: A vigil of national consciousness

The Gush Katif Museum is a few blocks away from the Mahaneh Yehuda market, close to The Jerusalem Post’s offices. A modest sign off Shaarei Zedek Street leads you through a short, vine-lined path to the museum, where you will likely meet Franklin, an expert on Gush Katif ready to divulge all his knowledge. 

Take him up on his presentation offer, where you will hear, as he puts it, “just the facts,” though he might sprinkle in a smidge of politics.

The museum takes you through the timeline of Gush Katif, and details the religious and political claim the Jewish people have had to the region, dating back to the Hasmonean dynasty. The museum showcases remnants of the settlement, such as the Netzarim Menorah, which was carried all the way to the Western Wall during the disengagement from Gush Katif.

A placard by the menorah quotes one of the men who carried it, reading, “It [the menorah] will be maintained in Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish nation, until we are able to return and light up all the Land of Israel in its entirety.”

Throughout the museum, powerful photography prints show the struggle and strife faced by residents and soldiers alike during the disengagement; the IDF was charged with removing its own people from land they were originally encouraged to settle. There is also a small theater in the museum that screens films on the subject.

Upstairs, the museum hosts the work of late artist Daniel Avital, who immigrated to Israel from Morocco at six months old. In 2000, he suffered a stroke combined with cardiac issues. At the hospital, he claimed to have had biblical visions.

“The desire to paint, build, and sculpt was too great for me, and from that day in the hospital, I began to paint, illustrate, and dream about the biblical people of Israel,” stated Avital in an introduction on his website.

His work consists of dioramas depicting biblical scenes. One piece, titled The Death of Samson, depicts the biblical figure breaking the pillars of a temple in Gaza, where he was before meeting his demise.

In his artwork, Avital used stone, marble, natural stone, liquid stone, pebbles, basalt, sand, burnt clay, mosaic stone, silver, gold, wood, and glass.

There is also a large art piece that features a stone slab with nails driven into it, forming the shape of Israel. The area where Gaza and the Gush Katif settlements are on the map is ripped out of the artwork.

The placard for the artwork reads, “...This part of the country is still in our hearts and still a part of Israel,” driving home the museum’s mission to keep the memory of Jewish settlement in Gaza alive.

Bright beginnings

In 1970, the Golda Meir government established the first modern Jewish settlements in Gaza three years after the Six Day War. (Here, the word “settlements” is used without political connotation – settling of the land.)

The settlements were built in the embodiment of Zionism and Jewish national values, according to the Gush Katif Heritage Center. They were also constructed with national security in mind. Anywhere a settlement is built, the IDF follows, providing protection and deterrence to terrorism.

Gush in Hebrew means “cluster,” and katif means “harvest,” referring to clusters of land that people farmed and harvested.

Residents grew vegetables, fruits, potatoes, and peanuts on 25,000 dunams of land. Flowers, more vegetables – notably bug-free, leafy greens, still popular in supermarkets – and house plants were cultivated in 3,500 dunams of greenhouses. The area bloomed with lovely homes, synagogues, and the beautiful beach.

While touring the museum this week on a trip from the US, Rabbi Howard Zack recalled a time when his daughter Etana was living in Israel and would go to Gush Katif for Shabbatot.

“She went multiple times,” Zack said. “I would say, ‘It’s good to know you’re going. Don’t tell your mother until you get back.’”

Etana was completing her post-high school study in Jerusalem. “She was very upset during the disengagement,” Zack recounted.

People often thought of the settlements as exclusively Orthodox. However, secular settlers were a small but visible minority in the community.

Disengagement 

After facing the First and Second Intifadas, combined with immense international and local pressure, the Israeli government, under then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, decided to completely leave Gaza and remove four settlements in northern Samaria.

In addition, the disengagement was, at its heart, an attempt to make peace with the Palestinians. Sharon announced the plan in 2003 and would complete the removal in 2005.

The plan tore at the hearts of the nation, triggering protests throughout the country. At one point, over 100,000 Israelis participated in the Human Chain protest, holding hands and creating a human chain that started in Gush Katif and ended at the Western Wall.

A 54-year-old woman named Yelena Bosinova from the evacuated West Bank settlement of Kedumim lit herself on fire in protest. She died days later from her burns.

Families received compensation averaging over $200,000 for their forced removal. Some of them feel they have never truly recovered, not having received the promised support from the state or reestablishing themselves elsewhere, whether economically or within a community fabric.

The museum displays Sharon’s addresses to the nation on the day of the implementation of the disengagement plan. He described the removal of the settlements as “difficult” and “painful.” 

His words, spoken in 2005, ominously foreshadowed the Oct. 7 massacre, 18 years later.

“Gaza cannot be held onto forever. Over one million Palestinians live there, and they double their numbers with every generation. They live in incredibly cramped refugee camps, in poverty and squalor, in hotbeds of ever-increasing hatred, with no hope whatsoever on the horizon…

“Now the Palestinians bear the burden of proof. They must fight terror organizations, dismantle its infrastructure, and show sincere intentions of peace in order to sit with us at the negotiating table,” he said.

“The world awaits the Palestinian response – a hand offered in peace or continued terrorist fire. To a hand offered in peace, we will respond with an olive branch. But if they choose fire, we will respond with fire, more severe than ever.”

Sharon, who died in 2014 following a stroke and a protracted coma, would not live to see the extent of Gaza’s response or to see Israel indeed burn and respond with fire.

Discussions of return

Since Oct. 7, some Israelis, many of them Right-wing and religious, have been pushing for a return to Gush Katif to resettle Gaza. In January, over 3,000 people attended a conference at the Jerusalem International Convention Center calling for the return of the settlements.

At the conference, Yossi Dagan, head of the Shomron Regional Council, proclaimed:

“After the Shoah, we suffered on Oct. 7. The answer is only... the return to the Gaza Strip and Gush Katif.

“We call on the government to speak in the only language the Middle East will understand and establish settlements in the Gaza Strip. We are here to take the first step on the long journey. It will be difficult, but the only other alternative is Shoah.”

Nine months into the war, the people of Israel keep their eyes trained on Gaza.■

Erica Schachne, Judith Sudilovsky, and Zvika Klein contributed to this article.