Hamas War

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Will it be enough?


Arik Sharon's and the Disengagement Authority's hype about a "solution for every family" is recognized by even the most enthusiastic disengagers as a bluff.

Thousands of innocent Jews were exiled from their homes and set up in all sorts of temporary setups, without the minimal financial compensation needed to buy or build new homes.

Almost two full years have passed, and most are unemployed, living in refugee camps far from employment possibilities. The "lucky ones" who received some money have eaten most of it or spent it on new appliances, since their old ones were broken or lost "in transit."

Now, the Knesset, led by Ichud Le'umi (National Union) MK Uri Ariel has allocated more money.


Will it be enough? Will it solve the problems? What's the point of just giving without providing homes to buy or land to build on?


I also think that they should give up on their unrealistic dream to recreate their former lives. It's a humpty dumpty dream, just impossible.


Why aren't their leaders encouraging them to look further afield to establish new lives and stop mourning their old one?

4 comments:

Rafi G. said...

whenever I talk about this to anybody who lives in a country where capitalism is king (USA), they always ask why these people don't just take their money and buy houses somewhere else. Sure, they want to live together, but at what cost? move on. go to a city or different settlement. buy a house. find employment.

Batya said...

I spoke to people who said that the compensations wasn't sufficient to buy anything reasonable, outside of 40 year old slums. And also it took so long for the money to be given out, they had to sign extremely long leases, with cancellation penalties for the "caravillas." Just to make sure that no money would be left.
Remember that Israel is a small country without all that much available housing.

Rafi G. said...

the trauma is an issue that cannto be monetized. what happened to them is horrible. But you are right. they should be moving on and not dwelling solely on the past.

Israel is a small country and maybe people don't understand that, but I know there are housing projects going up all around the country and if someone had the impetus, he could go find himself a place. Once one person did it, then another would and another and the problem (at least the housing and maybe the employment at ;east [partially) would be solved. But they would not be living together, which is what they want.

but they ave to move on. People will not look at them mercifully for so much longer. Now they got more money out of the government, and they probably deserve even mroe than that. but eventually people will be sickof it and will say go buy a house already and leave us alone

Batya said...

It generally takes a year or two to recover well enough from such a trauma, and now we're there almost two years later, but they're too poor financially.
Refugees who tried to buy found themselves priced out of the market.
For many Gush Katif was their place, and it's very hard to get reoriented.
Please, don't blame the victims. We never know how we would have reacted if placed in the same position.