"A refugee in his own land"

I24NEWS – Avi Farhan has been uprooted from Sinai and Gaza. He has one message for world leaders: no more

With some necessary adjustments, the theme of the James Bond classic “You Only Live Twice” could be adopted by Avi Farhan. So far, he has lived through not one, but two political expulsions from his home and has become the symbol of Israel’s intricate, complex policy on the lands it captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Devoid of Bond’s superpowers, his tenacity has earned him the reputation of being a “pain in in the butt” for the establishment. In a divided Israel, he’s a hero and a victim for some, and an evil settler two times over in the eyes of others.

In 1982, Farhan was evacuated from the northern Sinai Israeli town of Yamit when Israel signed its peace agreement with Egypt in return for a full withdrawal from the desert peninsula. He was subsequently evacuated in 2005 from his settlement home in Gaza as part of the unilateral disengagement from the coastal enclave engineered by the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The same Sharon personally helped him pick the settlement where he wanted to live after being expelled from Yamit: Elei Sinai in the northern Gaza Strip. It was as close to the Mediterranean as possible, as similar to Yamit as could be.

Farhan, his wife Lora, and their four children (now grown up) made an effort to reconstruct their lives – first after Yamit, then again after Gaza for a second, less successful time. Ten years after the pullout from Gaza, he and a community of 41 families evacuated from the same region still do not have permanent homes. Most of his life belongings are still packed in a huge container located near his temporary caravan in Kibbutz Neve Yam up north. He still lives close to the sea, but this time within Israel’s internationally recognized borders.

His community, aging and frustrated, is scattered all over Israel in temporary dwellings. Still wading through bureaucratic red tape, they are waiting for an indifferent – sometimes hostile – establishment to finalize the process. It never really occurred to him that he chose to live twice on land that was not really his. In fact, he gladly presents an old document proving that Elei Sinai and the whole region there was once nothing but a demilitarized zone.

Avi Farhan“Avi Farhan (center) carries an Israeli flag just before being evacuated from Elei Sinai in the Gaza Strip in 2005”

At our recent meeting, in the midst of events marking the 10th anniversary of the disengagement from Gaza, Farhan arrives dressed in full uniform: the disengagement protest T-shirt, a huge backpack full of material, maps, correspondence and letters. The bright orange shirt, a color chosen by the settlers at the time to brand their resistance, now says: “Ten years since deportation – still refugees in our own homeland.” Farhan uses the word “refugee” often and with no qualms. He dubs the evacuees from their original communities “diaspora.” “This is what we are,” he insists, “refugees and a diaspora.”

And hence the message he wants to convey to the settlers in the West Bank, to the EU and Washington: “There will be no more evacuations under any circumstances, not even in the case of an agreement with the Palestinians. Israel has to demand that all Israeli settlers stay where they are – even under different sovereignty. Any sovereignty – but no more uprooting. The entity in charge will be responsible for the safety of the Jews there.”

Farhan himself tried to practice what he preaches. In 1982, long before the era of smart phones and text messages, from the post office in Yamit he sent three telegrams to Camp David: one to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, one to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and one to US President Jimmy Carter. With the help of an English-speaking friend, he asked all three to let Israelis stay in Sinai under Egyptian sovereignty. Other than a short “we got your letter” from Begin’s aid there was no response. On the eve of the disengagement from Gaza, he sent a similar request to British PM Tony Blair. “Twelve families from Elei Sinai were willing to stay there under Palestinian sovereignty,” he tells i24news. “We even approached the Knesset about it. Well, you know how it ended.”

Avi Farhan“March from Yamit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, 1982. Avi Farhan (center) and the Chief Rabbi of the Kotel Rabbi Getz (right)”

The 1982 evacuation was easier. Not just because it was the first and they were younger, not even because it was in return for peace with Egypt. “I don’t consider it peace,” he says. It was Sharon himself as defense minister at the time, on the verge of the first war in Lebanon, who made it easier. Farhan was on his way to set up a protest “refugee camp” at the entrance to Gaza, when Sharon’s aide came to see him with an offer he could not refuse. “Sharon suggests that instead of a protest, you start a new settlement.” It worked. He left the national flag he was carrying (part of his eternal protest attire) in the hands of the chief rabbi of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, met with Sharon in his office and went to work.

Elei Sinai became the new Yamit. Farhan had a beautiful home, ten fishing boats in partnership with Palestinians, a small restaurant and a dream about a small resort in the area. “As a Colonel (reserve) in the army, I warned them in advance that someday, Palestinians will be firing rockets from my basement on Ashkelon and Sderot. Today I know it for a fact.”

Indeed he does. After the withdrawal from Elei Sinai, the family, the container, the flag and new protest pamphlets moved to the Gaza border town of Sderot. His wife, an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, had a small successful lingerie business. Soon after they moved there, a Kassam rocket fired from Gaza fell near the shop and damaged it. When promised a permanent house in the north, Lora moved the small business to a small town up north. A wrong business decision cost her a significant amount of money. Now she has found a new location, trying to recoup the losses.

Avi Farhan“Avi Farhan in Jerusalem”

Last week, Farhan launched another march to Jerusalem. He is older (69 years of age), more bitter and angry. The flags came out, the slogans and the orange hat. But one component was missing from the protest march that ended at the President’s Residence: public interest. The new act of defiance went almost unnoticed. “The story of Gush Katif and its evacuation is not a local story, it’s a national one,” he says.

Not really. In 2015 it remains basically the story of those directly affected, like Farhan, who chose to serve as a living memorial. Even he looks more like a relic from a different era that most choose to forget.