In Gaza, Defiance Tempered by Tears

For Some Settlers, Reality of Evacuation Comes With a Knock on the Door

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip, Aug. 17 -- Reflecting in the evening cool, Menachem Anaki realized he'd been waiting for the knock on his door for more than a decade.

Anaki, a stout, thickly bearded man, moved into his pretty, whitewashed home near the synagogue more than 20 years ago. Two of his four children were born here, and it is hard for him to imagine a nicer place to raise a family than amid Gaza's date palms and sea breezes. But when Israel signed the Oslo peace accords in 1993, placing parts of Gaza under Palestinian political control, Anaki had a feeling his days here were numbered.

Soldiers came Wednesday evening to tell him his time was up. His Hyundai was packed for the move, and boxes filled the living room, whose walls were covered with graffiti warning the arriving troops that "God is watching you." Uncharacteristically, he began to cry. So did his wife, Mary, a special education teacher who until that moment believed the knock might never come.

"Ever since Oslo, I knew they might kick us out," said Anaki, the groundskeeper of a nearby beach resort. "But when the moment came, I realized I was leaving my whole life. As realistic as you try to be, you can't stop your heart."

The day many in Gaza's largest Jewish settlement had dreaded for months began with the arrival of hundreds of Israeli troops dashing through the streets in the morning heat. At the end of it, dozens of soldiers splayed out on the brick sidewalk near the Anakis' doorstep, sleeping amid smoldering trash fires and the sounds of chanting from inside the synagogue.

The Shachar Battalion was greeted Wednesday morning by a cluster of teenage girls standing sentry on the roof of a house near the settlement's entrance. "Shame on you!" they shouted as the soldiers passed by. "Don't you dare!"

The battalion stretched out in columns, troops encircling their assigned blocks. Working from maps based on aerial photography and annotated with family information for each house, small groups of soldiers knocked gingerly on doors to see if anyone would leave voluntarily. Rabbis and social workers accompanied the units.

By midafternoon, military officials said 158 houses and public buildings, approximately a third of those in Neve Dekalim, had been abandoned.

But progress was slow for much of the morning. Fires burned in many intersections, blocking the tour buses being used to evacuate families.

The battalion worked along a row of double-wide duplexes set on sandy lots. Just after 9 a.m., a group of five soldiers knocked on the first door of the day, house No. 287. They were welcomed with shouts by two older women who answered it.

"You're exactly like you-know-who," one said, alluding to Nazi soldiers.

From across the street, several girls screamed, "You can't take her from her home."