Sep. 12, 2005 Dreaming of strawberry fields
By MATTHEW GUTMAN
Holding out a piece of crumbling paper, Hussein Abu Rabiya smiled giddily through a set of rotten teeth. "Tomorrow I will be a rich man," confided the farmer, squatting comfortably in the sand in front of his home.
One might have mistaken it for an ancient lotto ticket; for this Beit Lahiya resident it’s just as good. Yellowing at the edges is the "tabu" or deed to Rabiya’s 5.5-dunam (1.375-acre) plot just over the settlement barrier fence in the Jewish fishing village known until two weeks ago as Dugit.
Israel expropriated the land to build a security fence for Dugit and Elei Sinai shortly after the intifada erupted in September 2000. On Monday morning, 38 years after moving into the Gaza Strip, Israel intends to leave Dugit and the other Gaza settlements.
And while Abu Rabiya’s government, the Palestinian Authority, haggles over border regimes, airports and abandoned synagogues, he allowed himself to dream. While his plump wife served tea, he bragged about the potatoes, tomatoes and those "special Gaza strawberries" he will grow there.
As a reporter drove him toward his plot beyond Beit Lahiya’s cactus hedges, Abu Rabiya began to calculate the value of his land: "At 50,000 [Jordanian] dinar a dunam, that is 400,000 dinars." Even though his math was wrong, his property could still be worth more than 250,000 dinars, or about $400,000.
Until the intifada the land had been sweet to Abu Rabiya. With the profit from countless bushels of strawberries, he married off six sons and sent another to study in Russia and England. Though a devout Muslim, he seemed almost drunk with the expectation of reclaiming his plot: "All I want is to go there once, pray and then I can die a happy man if God wants to take me."
He is not the only Beit Lahiyan eager to build anew. Working a plot near Abu Rabiya was Muhammad Ihleil, 45. A burly man, Ihleil offered a hand encrusted with dirt and with the texture of a tree root. In between barking orders at his bent workers planting strawberry seedlings, he explained that this was his first planting day since he purchased his 22-dunam plot between Dugit and Elei Sinai just after the eruption of the first intifada.
Head of the Strawberry Growers Association of Northern Gaza, which boasts 800 members, Ihleil said he was among some 330 small farmers affected by the settlements and the security barriers around them.
"And believe it or not,‘ he added as cool as Rabiya was excitable, ’I think I just saw the last two tanks leave Dugit."
With that statement, his workers lifted green-capped heads from the deep rows of earth and those with the green caps emblazoned with little Hamas logos began singing their group’s song: "God is with you, Hamas. Our blood will be for you, Hamas."
Yousef, 25, farmhand, hummed as he fingered the earth to make way for the strawberry seedlings. Later he said that "the blood of the martyrs was worth it.‘ And added that ’Hamas and the resistance are responsible" for Israel’s withdrawal.
He appeared in good company. According to a September 7 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 84 percent of Palestinians agreed.
While youths gathered in clumps around the Gush Katif settlements of southern Gaza, in northern Gaza, home to the Strip’s least ideological settlers, there was little sign of a rush toward the settlements. There was also little sign of the Palestinian Authority security forces that were said to have encircled the settlements to prevent looters and curiosity seekers from rushing toward the ruins.
Mostly there was the smell of damp earth. Some sleepy members of the National Security Forces monitoring the northern part of Gaza met this reporter in flip-flops, and offered him a smoke from their water pipe.
Lt. Faris Abu Kammar noted that the National Security Forces posted a total of 400 men in the northern sector of Gaza. The villagers in this area were "very quiet," he observed from his tent near Elei Sinai. More challenging will be posting the hundreds of Palestinian flags his men have been given for the post-withdrawal festivities.
And like thousand of other Palestinians, farmer Abu Rabiya plans to head to the settlements early Monday morning when the IDF leaves. The PA has posted some 8,300 troops all over the Strip to stop the souvenir seekers and potential looters, issuing leaflets and public broadcast warnings that "mines and unexploded mortar shells" litter the settlements.
But if anyone is to be caught dancing on the settlement’s ruined rooftops, Rabiya intends to be the first. "Tomorrow, I will ride my donkey to my land and nothing will stop me – not mines, not bullets and not the [Palestinian] Authority."
Iran News
Français
