I woke up the other day feeling a little bit like Arthur Dent in The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, whose planet (Earth, as it happens) is
about to be blown up to make way for an intergalactic bypass.
The council were going to buy back my tenancy, of course, but the offer
they made me was parsimonious in the true British tradition. I wouldn't
be able to get another home anywhere.
Forced relocation is a terrible thing, something that should be done to
people only when a far greater good than their right to live where
they've always lived is at stake. American Indians know what it is like
to be unceremoniously kicked off your land merely because alien
interlopers with bigger guns want it for themselves.
The Karen tribe in Burma, the Palestinians, the people of the Sudan,
Uganda, Rwanda and Zimbabwe know all too well how easily their rights can
be taken away from them by those who hold power. In many other places,
too, entire communities have from time to time been compelled to up
sticks; for an atomic test, the building of a power dam or some other
scheme essential for the well-being of the majority or the personal gain
of a few.
Come to think of it, there's an awful lot of it about. In tsunami-hit
Aceh, forced relocation has been imposed by the authorities to allow them
to deal with the devastation. Those displaced will be housed in tem****ary
accommodation, but for how long and where they will go after that no one
knows.
Their situation was already perilous as a result of the campaign of
counter-insurgency and the state of martial law imposed by Jakarta. Fears
are high that in the wake of the disaster, their land may be taken away
from them so that they won't be able to return. In such cir***stances the
government's offer of compensation, equivalent to 9 US dollars per person
per month, is a tiny drop in a very large bucket.
The reverse - a huge drop in a bucket no bigger than a thimble - is also
possible. As a result of the Sharon government's decision to vacate the
Gaza Strip, 21 settlements have been dismantled, forcing relocation on
1,500 households, comprising some 8,500 settlers. Here again, it must be
said that being compelled to leave your home and start over again
somewhere else is upsetting, traumatic and - depending on your
cir***stances - expensive.
No one can blame these Israelis for being a bit miffed. But look at what
their government is doing for them. A package of compensation of 870
million US dollars has been set aside for them, that's more than 100,000
dollars for every man, woman and child.
Not for them tem****ary shelter in tents or leaky barracks: the Israeli
government will be housing them in Nitzan New Town, a specially erected
housing complex that will offer its residents air-conditioning, off-road
parking, fitted bathrooms and kitchens and solar panels for heating and
power.
No wonder one British newspaper dubbed Nitzan 'the most lavish refugee
camp in the world', certainly a far cry from the squalor in which their
Palestinian former neighbours in the Gaza Strip are forced to live, not
to mention the uprooted people of Aceh.
Given that the forced exodus from the Gaza Strip is part of Sharon's plan
to ensure peace and security for the Israeli people - though not
necessarily for the Palestinians - you'd think that the settlers would
leave with a smile on their faces. A wry smile, but still a smile. But
no.
Generous compensation means little to those who were already used to a
good lifestyle. The scenes of settlers being dragged, kicking and
screaming, from their homes show that there are other considerations at
play.
Jewish fundamentalists believe, with absolute, unshakeable conviction,
that God gave this land to them to have in all eternity. But nothing is
forever; what the Lord gives, the Lord can take away, and I wasn't
surprised that all their wailing, praying and ululating, rather like the
smoke from Cain's offering, never quite reached heaven.
The miracle that many felt was sure to come to their rescue never
materialised. In the end, the fundamentalists were forced to accept that
their eviction from Gaza - like so much else that upsets and unsettles us
- had been the will of God. Their God, of course, not mine.
--
T Moore
N E Manchester, England
http://sitemenu.tom-moore.com/
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