Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - At least one Israeli resident of a former northern Gaza Strip settlement said that he wants to return and rebuild his community there if the Israeli government will allow him to do so -- as well as act as a "human shield" against rocket fire.
Avi Farkan founded Elei Sinai at the behest of then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon in 1983 after Farkan and others were removed from the Israeli settlement of Yamit in the Sinai Desert as a result of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty in 1979.
Elei Sinai (going up from Sinai), Nisanit and Dugit were built inside Gaza just on the other side of the Israeli-Gaza border in an area that was once a United Nations "no-man's land."
No one believed that those three northern settlements would ever be moved because they were contiguous with the state of Israel and no Palestinians were in the area.
"Before we left there in the framework of the disengagement, we warned that it was a mistake to leave [the settlement] bloc in the north. It was a defensive shield for Ashkelon," Farkan said in a telephone interview.
"Today, we say: 'Correct the mistake,'" he said.
Farkan, who had a large home in Elei Sinai overlooking the Mediterranean Sea with a view of Ashkelon and its power plant in the distance, is now living in Sderot with his belongings still packed in four shipping containers, he said.
He estimated some 80 percent of the approximately 1,700 former residents of the three settlements would be willing to return, rebuild and act as a shield to the Israeli communities further north.
Although Israeli communities were in existence by the border for more than 20 years, Israel never declared sovereignty over the area. It's not likely that would happen now.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said earlier that when Israel left Gaza last year, it hadn't intended to return this year.
But Farkan said that if army intends to go in and out of Gaza from time to time as it has said it will do, it is a waste of time, fuel and soldiers' lives. The land needs to be taken and settlements built, he argued.
It is not likely that Israel would rebuild those communities any time soon, as Kassam rockets pummeled southern Israel on Friday while Israeli troops continued their military operation in the Gaza Strip aimed at stopping the rocket fire, retrieving a kidnapped soldier and crippling the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza.
Israeli troops and tanks rolled into the northern Gaza Strip early Thursday, taking up positions on the rubble of the three former northern Gaza Strip settlements -- Nisanit, Elei Sinai and Dugit -- after Palestinians fired a Kassam rocket that landed at a school in the center of the Israeli seaside city of Ashkelon.
Israeli forces entered the southern Gaza Strip en masse last week in an operation intended to free abducted Corporal Gilad Shalit, setting off the broad military operation.
It is the first time Israel has mounted a ground incursion into Gaza since it uprooted 21 Jewish communities and withdrew all of its troops as part of the disengagement plan to unilaterally separate Israel from the Palestinians last summer.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh accused Israel of trying to reoccupy the Gaza Strip, but Israeli officials have said that Israel would stay only until its objectives of freeing Shalit and stopping rocket fire are achieved.
Despite the military presence, five Kassam rockets slammed into the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Friday, smashing into a neighborhood, a school, the market place and a factory, lightly injuring three people. Five more rockets were launched toward the area before dawn.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said on Friday that Israel would operate in the Gaza Strip until the terrorists "put down the Kassams and return them to the storerooms" and return abducted soldier Shalit. "Hamas bears full responsibility," he said.
Israel "is not willing to sink into a swamp in Gaza." He noted that Palestinian terrorists were operating from within populated areas, at times firing RPGs from behind the protection of children.
"Our soldiers are doing everything to hurt the terrorists while considering the population," he said.
In related news, the U.S. and France criticized a draft resolution introduced to the United Nations Security Council by Qatar on behalf of Arab states condemning Israel's arrest of senior Hamas members in the Palestinian Authority government and demanding that Israel quit the Gaza Strip immediately.
Subscribe to the free CNSNews.com daily E-Brief.
Send a Letter to the Editor about this article.