As we prepare to mark three years since Ariel Sharon expelled almost 10,000 Jews from their homes and ordered the destruction of Gush Katif, former residents are forming a ‘garin’ to begin plans to resettle the area.

According to Avi’al Tucker, who was born in Netzer Hazani, the first community in the area, she hopes to return following the “big IDF operation in Gaza” and once again, Netzer Hazani will be the first community reestablished.

Tucker and many senior security establishment officials are in agreement, that a major IDF operation in Gaza is a matter of “if” but “when”, and she and dozens and dozens of former Gush Katif families and interested parties are planning to use the moment to plant the first seeds to the new Gush Katif.

Avi’al reflects back at her childhood, when the first trees were planted and when the tomatoes grew in the hothouses, when as a child of four she handed a tomato to Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin in her hothouse. She hopes that her children will be privileged to the same in their hothouses one day in the future.

In a related event, one of the soldiers who took part in the expulsion, a female now in her 20s, wrote a letter expressing her pain, profound remorse, and the need to share her feelings of guilt for taking part in the government’s uprooting of Jews from their home.

In an interview on Kol Chai Radio, the anonymous former soldier, now in her 20s, explained how she was indoctrinated by the government, bringing her to a level of insensitively which permitted her to act in accordance to the government’s, police and IDF orders. Today, she seeks the forgiveness of those whose lives she helped to destroy, calling on soldiers to disobey orders should there ever be a repeat of the expulsion events chas v’sholom. She painfully recounted her actions in Kfar Darom, explaining how the children cried and she tried to understand why this was all happening.

She opened an email account and has asked people to write to her to express their feelings regarding her legitimate effort to mend fences. [email protected]

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)