Caravan life for Gaza settlers

2005-07-31 20:15

Nitzan - Israel on Sunday opened a state-of-the-art caravan park set in lush rolling countryside near the Mediterranean to rehouse the first settlers leaving the Gaza Strip ahead of next month's historic pullout.

"Nitzan will be able to welcome around 300 families, including 160 this week," housing minister Yitzhak Herzog said of the site in southern Israel.

Herzog promised the authorities would find accommodation for each of the 1 550 settler families to be evacuated from their homes as part of Israel's withdrawal of all residents and soldiers from the Gaza Strip this summer.

"In places where homes are not ready, we will use mobile homes or hotels in order to ensure that each family has a roof over its head," he told army radio.

Voluntarily

Herzog said his ministry was "working on the hypothesis that half the Gaza settlers would agree to leave voluntarily before August 15", two days before the landmark evacuation operation is scheduled to begin.

The upmarket caravans, dubbed "trailer villas" in the local media, have a floor surface area of 60 to 90 square metres, and are fully air-conditioned.

Workmen bustle about the neighbourhood like swarming bees, watched by soldiers staring out from watchtowers. Bulldozers level the ground as surveyors take measurements in the middle of undergrowth where sheep still graze.

"This is nothing compared to our 150-square-metre villa in Nissanit, but it's better than being chucked out into the street," sighed Victor Hassan on being handed the keys to his caravan.

New life

He is to nestle down to a new life with his wife Dinah in a tiled, four-roomed and two bathroomed home - all 90 square metres of air-conditioned space - backing on to a postage stamp garden.

Aged 62, retired police officer Hassan is re-starting his life. He is to remain in Nissanit long enough to arrange his move and buy a $1 000 container to keep his personal affects safe at an army base until he moves permanently.

The 8 000 Jewish settlers who have to leave the Gaza Strip and four enclaves in the northern West Bank are entitled to $1 000 compensation per square metre of self-built homes and $700 per square metre for purchased properties.

At the beginning of the month, Nitzan was nothing more than an idea on a drawing board at the construction department of the defence ministry.

Ready

"This Monday, 170 trailer villas will be ready out of a total of 351 by the end of August, with all amenities, gas, water, electricity, rubbish collection," boasted the project's director, Raphi Bassman.

"There will be two synagogues here, three kindergartens, a clinic, a bank, a little shopping centre, offices and even a wood to be planted by the Israeli forestry department," he added.

- AFP