IDF sets up ‘Vacation Village’ in destroyed Gaza

Gideon Levy for Haaretz

Here’s some good news coming straight from the killing fields: The Israel Defense Forces has built a holiday village on the Gaza coast. Sgt. Yaron Rabinovich ate some churritos and steak there earlier this week. In an adjacent room there’s a physiotherapist who gave a soldier a pleasant massage.

The village is surrounded by lawns of synthetic grass, cushions for sprawling in every corner. One soldier is enjoying a cappuccino, while another has a glass of XL with ice cubes. There are pampering breakfasts just ‘like in a hotel,’ and in the evening there’s a barbecue.

‘I never thought there would be a place like that here,’ said Sgt. Daniel Vakret. There’s a lounge for treats, Belgian waffles and pretzels, there are also popcorn and cotton candy machines, as well as a barber and a pedicurist for the fighters.

The IDF newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth spread this description over two pages. The newspaper sometimes arouses a strong longing for the objective and professional journalism of the previous IDF newspaper, Bamahane.

Ostensibly, there’s something tasteless about this vacation spa, something repulsive and infuriating, which even arouses harsh memories, mainly due to its location.

The soldiers are resting from their bloodcurdling work of destruction and killing over a glass of XL provided by the army. On the other side of the fence – a hell of their own creation; several hundred meters from them – human beings are dying of starvation and cold, and here in the village, there’s sweet cotton candy.

‘Jabalya has become a ghost town. Outside we mainly see pack after pack of stray dogs roaming around and hunting for scraps of food,’ was how it was described by the restrained Haaretz military commentator Amos Harel, upon his return from Gaza. From the windows of the vacation village built by the IDF, on a clear day it may be possible to see the packs of hungry dogs, maybe the synthetic grass conceals them from the eyes of the soldiers.

What definitely conceals them and the total destruction surrounding them is blindness and heartlessness. A holiday village for Jewish soldiers in a place where death and destruction cry out from the ground. A glass of XL not far from where children are fighting over a glass of water. Pretzels and steaks, a stone’s throw away from where people are starving to death for a piece of bread. A pedicure for soldiers’ delicate feet, not far from the place where people are slowly dying, after those same pedicured soldiers demolished all of Gaza’s hospitals.

A barbecue next to the place where millions are now freezing at night in their exposed and torn tents, wearing only rags. There were 100,000 people living in this crowded place, Jabalya, and almost all of them were expelled by force by the army to nowhere, while 2,000 of them were killed. Is there a more suitable place for building a holiday village? Even the most cynical and morbid of playwrights couldn’t have imagined such a script.

The establishment of this holiday village conforms with the horrifying ‘urban renewal’ plan that has begun in the northern Gaza Strip, while blurring the truth and throwing sand in people’s eyes: The IDF is building to remain there forever. Roads, infrastructure, and now a holiday village too.

The soldiers vacationing there are considered ‘Israeli heroes’ who deserve everything. But how can one forget that it was they who carried out the cruel policy, without batting an eyelash, without hesitation and without doubts.

To entirely destroy a refugee camp where the descendants of the previous Palestinian disaster lived, the one Israel created, and not to think about the significance.

To raise a glass of XL on the rocks in the heart of all that. To enjoy the caressing hands of the masseuse. To lick the soft and sticky cotton candy. To stretch out on a hammock and see pack after pack of stray dogs roaming around for scraps of food, not to think about anything. Basically, not to feel anything at all.