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Uprooting Jews

Knesset furious over homeless Gaza refugees


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
August 23, 2005

With the forced removal of Jewish life from the Gaza Strip complete, stories are pouring in of refugee families left with no place to live and forced to bear many of the financial costs of their own evacuation.

Sigal Barda and her family opted to leave their Elei Sinai home voluntarily, but told The Jerusalem Post the replacement home the government had promised them was not ready on time.

Instead, the Barda's were sent to a hotel in nearby Ashkelon, but upon arrival found there were no rooms available for them and were told to seek other accommodation.

Worse than that, said Sigal, was the behavior of unsympathetic government officials, who haggled with the family over every shekel of compensation, and demanded the evacuees pay for the moving containers that had removed their belongings.

Other families were evicted from hotels in northern Israel and Jerusalem at the weekend, after the government failed to actually secure bookings for the full ten days of temporary accommodation promised the evacuees.

Those that were able to move into the temporary caravan ?villas? the government had so publicly patted itself on the back over found their new residences flooded with sewage water.

Prime Minister's Office director Ilan Cohen and the head of the SELA ?Disengagement Authority,? Yonatan Bassi, appeared before the Knesset's Finance Committee Tuesday to answer charges of the government's apparent lack of preparation.

Right-wing members of the committee expressed outrage over the failure to adequately provide for the evacuees, despite nearly two years of preparation time.

?We want to hear how you are going to solve the problems? that now exist, demanded MK Nissan Slomianski of the National Religious Party. ?People are sitting in tents with no place to sleep.?

Cohen responded that the Evacuation-Compensation Law Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pushed through the Knesset in February does not contain a ?single word on temporary housing.?

?We were not instructed [to handle this], and we are doing the best we can? with the situation that has emerged,? continued Cohen.

An incredulous Nissim Dahan of the Shas Party exclaimed, ?Your apathy [regarding the suffering of thousands of people] is driving me crazy.?

Infuriated by what he called a ?testimony of lies,? Likud MK Ayoub Kara called for an ?inquiry to determine how SELA failed to prepare and provide solutions, despite having plenty of time to do so.?

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