Migrating under fire?

Against all odds, people are still moving to the beleaguered South.

By SAM SOKOL
Construction in Givat Bar 521 (photo credit: Ohad Romano)
Construction in Givat Bar 521
(photo credit: Ohad Romano)
‘This school has a shell crater in its wall.” That’s all I could think when, several months ago, I found myself in Kibbutz Nir Oz, in the western Negev only three kilometers from the Gaza border.
The government-sponsored tour of southern communities that were, and still are, under frequent mortar and missile attack from Palestinian terrorists showed me and several dozen other foreign and domestic journalists the costs of living under a sustained barrage.
In Nir Oz, a Government Press Office representative took the tour participants to see the kibbutz’s kindergarten and preschool, which had been hit by a shell only an hour before the students had been slated to arrive for the day. Had the missile struck an hour later, the cost in lives would have been terrible. However, despite the pock marks in the thick concrete walls of the armored school building, and some interior damage caused by shrapnel, the school was cleaned and opened later that day, showing that even bombs and missiles do not stop normal life.
Like London during the Blitz, the Jews of the western Negev continue their daily lives, and surprisingly their numbers are growing. Over 25,000 Jews have migrated to the Negev since 2002, according to the OR Movement, which facilitates settlements in the southern desert. And although the rate of growth in Gaza border towns through migration has been much lower, many residents of these communities – which suffer from frequent sniper and mortar fire – say there has been a steady growth though new arrivals.
One such new arrival is Sin Levi, a single mother who moved with her nearly bar mitzva-aged son to Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, adjacent to Gaza, in July. A hitech worker at a start-up company, Levi is still getting used to the community, and although she has reservations about living so close to Hamas-controlled territory, she seems to enjoy life in the Eshkol region.
Originally from Arad, she moved to Kerem Shalom from Kfar Saba because she “wanted to have the kibbutz environment” for her son.
“I wanted him to have a different life, not the life you have in the city. Everything there is so materialistic, and I wanted him to have a more natural type of life,” she says.
LAST WEEK, I traveled down to the Negev to meet with Sol Fayerman Hansen of the OR Movement, who took me on a tour of communities ringing Beersheba. Established in 2002, the OR Movement’s foundational goal was to revive the moribund settlement and expansion of the Jewish presence in the Negev – in effect, a revival of former prime minister David Ben-Gurion’s vision of making the desert bloom.
When one looks at communities such as Givat Bar, a burg reminiscent of American suburbs, down to the soccer moms and skate park, and Carmit, a planned community to be settled shortly and currently only containing a brand new synagogue and Byzantine ruins, it becomes evident that many of the efforts at revitalizing Negev settlement are aimed at bringing people to new towns on the outskirts of the big city.
Obviously those interested in Negev pioneering find it easier to convince people to move to communities that, while in the line of fire of Kassam missiles, are not in range of the mortars and rifle rounds lobbed at communities such as Kerem Shalom or Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak.
Ronit Minaker, spokeswoman for the Eshkol Regional Council, says that while growth is not high in the communities under her council’s jurisdiction, it does exist. There is little attrition from the constant fire, she says, noting that she “only knows one family that left” because of the security situation. “Every year there are more [new residents],” she says.
According to Minaker, in 2010 there were 12,777 residents in the Eshkol region. By 2011, that number had increased to 12,999, and as of this past September, she says, there were 13,545. While she does not provide a detailed breakdown of these numbers, which would indicate how much of the increase could be attributed to natural growth, anecdotal evidence suggests that more people are moving in than are leaving, and that there is a net growth in population even if one only factors in migration and leaves natural growth on the side.
THE RESIDENTS of Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, east of the Israel- Gaza-Egypt border crossing that shares its name, have been living under fire for years. In August, terrorists attacked an Egyptian military base in the Sinai peninsula, stealing an armored car and bursting through the Kerem Shalom Crossing. They drove directly toward the kibbutz at 70 kilometers per hour before an IAF air strike stopped them.
The kibbutz has seen mortar barrages that have knocked out its power grid, and it has seen enough rocket fire to make all of its civilian residents feel like veterans of a long war.
However, says kibbutz spokesman Amit Caspi, the dangers of living next to Gaza have not deterred new residents from moving in.
Downplaying the rocket fire’s importance, he says that “there is sometimes fire from the Gaza Strip, but that is not the main issue for us here. It’s [just] a fact. In the end, we see people who move here, and generally city-dwellers coming from either the North or the Center.”
He says not many residents from the South move to the kibbutz.
“The new ‘immigrants,’ so to speak, are from the Center, and they have come here to make a change in their lifestyle,” he says, echoing Levi and several other new residents.
“In the city, people work very hard and can barely make ends meet. Here it is easier,” he says. “Here, it is a more relaxed place to live.”
He adds that “some who came are idealistic, but I can’t guarantee that. They have not come here because it is close to Gaza, but rather because it is a communal settlement with a high standard of living.”
Nonetheless, as one local resident points out, there are also many who moved to the region in the last few years to remain close to their former homes in
AMOS HAUZI, originally from Kiryat Gat, has been living in Kerem Shalom for just over a year. He says it is hard to explain what leads people to move to such a location, but that the kibbutz, with its communal lifestyle, is a “good fit” for him.
The peace and quiet (at least between rocket attacks) and the small-town sense of community that is conspicuously absent in many big cities seem to be the common themes among the new residents’ reasons for migrating.
Hauzi says he does not see any significant attrition in the western Negev kibbutz. “When missiles fall, we all go to the bomb shelter, and afterward we come out and resume our normal lives. We don’t fall victim to depression.”
While it is true that many residents of the Negev have grown used to the missile fire, or have at least integrated it into their lives as best they can, there has been a significant increase in post-traumatic stress disorder and other stressrelated psychological issues in the region, according to mental health workers. It seems that those who choose to live in the Negev and make their move stick have to have strong mental constitutions.
“Aside from the missiles, it is paradise,” insists Yael Talker, a resident of Kibbutz Re’im, north of Kerem Shalom.
“Some of us come here because it is our roots,” she adds, explaining her own move to the kibbutz about 10 years ago. Many “new” residents, such as herself, were “born here, and we left for a few years after the army and are now coming back with our families,” she says.
Such returnees often bring “a spouse and children with them,” she continues. “My husband is from central Tel Aviv. When I came, my husband had no history here.”
Summing up reasons new people come, she says they “are looking for a sense of community and mutual responsibility. They are looking for quiet and for a good education for their children. They are looking for a good quality of life, and that can be found in the Negev.”
Though she adds that “not everyone remains here; it isn’t simple with the danger,” she notes that “in the last eight years, there have been 10 new families that have moved to the kibbutz.”
COUNTERING THE brave front the Gaza border region residents put on is the pessimism of Leah Melloul, the spokeswoman for the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, who says that due to PTSD and its prevalence in the South, Israelis are “actually building up a new generation of children who have no future because nobody can understand what this means that you have to run for shelter sometimes up to 50 or 60 times a day. When I travel in New York or no matter where, when I hear the siren of an ambulance, I have a split second that I say to myself, ‘Where am I going to look for cover?’” Talker, meanwhile, notes that “there are many settlements in our area with no bomb shelters,” and urges the government to build more of them.
But while this reality and the fears of the physical and mental damage caused by the incessant rocket fire has deterred major growth, she continues, people still come. It seems that the draw of smalltown life can overcome even the reluctance to live under fire. Despite everything, these communities are still growing, albeit slowly. Talker believes that should there ever be a stop to the rocket fire, the growth that the Gaza Strip-adjacent communities would experience would be incredible.
As for the Negev as a whole? Fayerman-Hansen says his organization’s goal is to bring 600,000 Jews to the Negev by 2020. Whether that number will include many immigrants to the Eshkol region remains to be seen.