NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip, 17 September 2005 — Paintings of Palestinians killed in a nearly five-year-old uprising are already daubed on the walls of Gaza’s former Jewish settlements. Arabic slogans now cover the graffiti left by Israeli soldiers.
Even before the rubble of the settlements is cleared to allow new building, Palestinians are trying to erase the memory of the Israelis who completed their pullout from the Gaza Strip on Monday after 38 years of occupation.
“We wanted to make what was unacceptable look nice and acceptable,” said Taha Abu Ghali, heading a group of artists decorating the concrete sniper wall outside the biggest settlement of Neve Dekalim. “We want to share our people’s joy,” he added.
The 10-meter murals now covering the settlement walls are very much in the traditional school of the “martyr” paintings that are one of the few flashes of color in Gaza’s drab cinderblock cities and refugee camps. Earnest-faced young men with wispy mustaches, beards and assault rifles predominate - portraits of militants, many of them killed while attacking Jewish settlements.
Another regular feature is the gold-roofed Dome of the Rock mosque, a symbol of Jerusalem and the uprising since 2000, which militants say brought about the pullout from Gaza. Abu Ghali’s team painted a picture of an Israeli notebook with the page “Gaza” torn out and two further pages bearing the words “West Bank” and “Jerusalem” left, representing the other territories Palestinians want for their state.
Israeli soldiers had written on the wall of Neve Dekalim in English and Russian “It is ours and we will be here forever.” The last forces pulled out on Monday following the evacuation of the 8,500 Jews who had lived in the red-roofed settlements heavily defended against 1.4 million Palestinians living in the strip.
Where they could, Palestinians smashed synagogues and set them ablaze to destroy symbols of occupation. A diorama in Neve Dekalim illustrating settlements that Israel removed over two decades ago from Sinai was quickly wrecked. New phrases sprang up to replace those left by the angry settlers, furious to be forced from homes on what they saw as a biblical birthright.
“The Gaza pullout is the beginning of the end to occupation,” was one of the new brand of slogans. The Palestinian plan is to clear the rubble from the settlements and then use the land for a mixture of farmland, industrial sites and housing for cramped Gaza communities.
For convenience sake, Palestinians are still using the old Israeli names for the settlements. But the districts that are going to replace them will get new ones. Likely candidates to provide names are late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died last November, and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas resistance militants who was killed in a missile strike 18 months ago. “Now the occupation is gone and all its remains and memories must be wiped out,” said schoolteacher Ali Hussein, one of those who came to gaze at the paintings.
Meanwhile, a mangled bumper car is all that remains of Ibrahim Al-Nouri’s amusement park on the Gaza beachfront. Near the former Jewish settlement of Netzarim, the park lay next to a frequent battleground between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants in the uprising that erupted five years ago. Nouri closed it in 2001. Later the army bulldozed it.
While Nouri was happy to see the last Israeli soldier leave on Monday, he has no idea if he will ever have the money to rebuild his park. “My dream is the amusement park will return and children can play here. I want to put back all the rides that used to be here. My only ambition is it will be as it was,” he said. “Every time I come, it brings back painful memories. The place reminds me of all the money I lost,” said Nouri, smoking a cigarette in a plastic chair next to the empty lot that was once filled with laughter.
Across the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are returning to properties near settlements that became perilous to reach during the uprising, when the enclaves became regular flashpoints and anyone in the zones around them risked being shot.
