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CNN Live At Daybreak

Settlers Love their Land and Call it Home

Aired August 09, 2001 - 08:25   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
VINCE CELLINI, CNN ANCHOR: Israeli soldiers on one side, Palestinian gunman and bombers on the other, their front line truce in the Middle East conflict.

COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: And we are seeing some of the fruits of that conflict this morning in the violence that has gone on in central Jerusalem. Sometimes Jewish settlers seem to be in front of the front lines. In this fourth report in our week-long series, CNN's Mike Hanna visits now the settlements and the settlers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIKE HANNA, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Missubim (ph), the point at which the settlers cross from Israel into Gaza, ahead, a 20-minute drive through hostile Palestinian territory. Layser Amitay has driven this road for 13 years and in the last 11 months have seen it get more and more deadly.

LAYSER AMITAY, KFAR DAROM RESIDENT (through translator): Here at this intersection, a suicide bomber blew himself up against the concrete blocks. Here there were two grenade attacks.

HANNA: And a little further on...

AMITAY (through translator): We're getting to the place where my wife, Mary (ph), was murdered. The murder took place here next to these palm trees. They used the palm trees as a marker. When the bus got between the two trees, they joined the wires and the bus exploded.

HANNA: Layser Amitay's wife was one of two Israelis killed by that Palestinian bomb last November. Nine people were injured. At the end of Layser's drive, the settlement of Capaderome (ph) and a home, he says, has been without a wife and mother for 259 days.

AMITAY (through translator): If I was once connected to this place because I was building in it, now I'm connected by blood. To go past the place where Mary was murdered hurts me, but it has bound me to the land even tighter.

HANNA: As people die, so are they born. Rachel Assraf was pregnant with this baby when she was injured by the same bomb that killed her friend, Mary Amitay. Not once in the long weeks of recuperation, says Rachel, does she think of abandoning what she agrees is a dangerous settlement life. RACHEL ASSRAF, KFAR DAROM RESIDENT: Leaving a home. It's not a house with four walls; it's a home. Leaving a place you brought children to after you gave birth to them, leaving a place where you planted trees and grass and feel connected to the place, that's not so easy to get up and leave.

HANNA: In the Palestinian view, the settlement is a visible sign of an illegal policy of occupation, a symbol of Israeli oppression and defiance of international law. For settlers, the Palestinians who live all around are enemies. The Palestinian goal far greater than just the destruction of the settlements.

DR. SODY NAIMER, NEVE DEKALM RESIDENT: The arranged to getting (UNINTELLIGIBLE) actually want one thing is to destroy the Jewish nation and to see an end of the state of Israel. So we're back to square one where there's no other side to discuss and agree on anything. It's just a matter of your existence or your disappearance.

HANNA: In the distance, the Palestinian city of Han Eunice (ph) in close proximity to the red grooves of the houses of the Neve Dekalm settlement.

(on camera): In the past six months, around 300 mortar shells have been fired by Palestinians into this area. More than a dozen Israelis have been injured. Remarkably, no one has been killed.

NAIMER: We believe that we're performing some sort of a divine deliverance here and it's more idealistic than anything else. It's just some people could look at it as pure luck.

HANNA (voice-over): But underlying the belief in divine protection, the fear that the next attack will claim a life.

NAIMER: It's like shellshock, you know? One of the kids in the house slams the door and I'm jumping. If I ever have one of the regular casual notices on my beeper, I'm jumping.

HANNA: A number of teenagers were injured by a mortar shell that fell outside a youth club in the settlement. Sixteen-year-old Daut said she thought about leaving but decided to stay.

DAUT MORDECHAI, NEZER HAZZAMI GAZA RESIDENT (through translator): I didn't want to leave this place. I was born here and I grew up here. My friends are here and all my memories are here. I don't think because of these attacks we should leave.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): We hope that there will be help from the outside to stop this mess. That is what our leaders also hope. We hope they will get the Arabs out of this region and the whole mess will be over.

HANNA: For most of the settlers there's only hostile interaction with Palestinians and a brief glimpse of Palestinian vehicles stopped at road blocks while the Israeli vehicles are given priority to pass through. But there can be exceptions. Michael Goldschmidt farms Amaryllis flower bulbs for export to the United States. For more than 20 years he's employed local Palestinians. He has continued to do so throughout months of bitter conflict.

MICHAEL GOLDSCHMIDT, GANNE TAL RESIDENT: I come to work every day. We talk about everything between us and I don't feel any conflict in (UNINTELLIGIBLE) whatsoever. But that doesn't depend on the workers, and it doesn't depend on me what happens in the country in the whole .

HANNA: "Whatever happens," says Michael's wife, "the family is here to stay."

RIVKA GOLDSCHMIDT, GANNE TAL RESIDENT: And we should fight this period of fighting and then the Arabs will see that our -- that we are determined to stay here and we are staying for good, they'll have to put down their weapons.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

HANNA: It's a balmy night, a group of settlers relax next to the beach, a light wind blows in off the sea, all apparently tranquil.

EITAN MATZLIAH, NEXER HAZZANI RESIDENT (through translator): I don't sleep at night. At this time, I used to be asleep, now I can't sleep at night. So I sleep during the day and I am awake during the night. The whole night, I live in fear but my life has to go on.

HANNA: And life does go on. The daily routine, children gather to play, morning prayers at the synagogue, the belief routine itself is an act of defiance. The conviction of all that by their very presence they protect and preserve the state of Israel and that they do so with pride and with dignity.

AMITAY (through translator): We know that it is possible to absorb the blows and not lose our humanity, to look the whole world in the eye and say that we will act as human beings in the shadow of God. We will soak up this conflict and the strength of ourselves and we will get through it.

ASSRAF: I understand today that the Arabs want us out of here and we're not going to give them that. We're going to stay on because we feel we're on a mission here. And I believe we're going to see better times. I don't - I hope they're not far away.

HANNA: But as each day passes, that hope fades along with the sun setting on the settlements.

Mike Hanna, CNN, in Neve Dekalm, Gaza.

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