GANEI TAL, Nahal Sorek Regional Council — At the entrance to the settlement, a huge sign is hanging, carrying a brief description of the traumatic ordeal the Ganei Tal settlement went through. It reads as follows: “Sixty-five years after the establishment of the state of Israel, 31 years after settling on the land of Gush Katif, and five years after we were expelled from our homes, we, the settlers of Ganei Tal and our descendants, with our heads high, are settling down on our new land.” On the other side, another sign reminds the local residents to register their children for the annual trip to the concentration camps in Poland.
All 65 families evacuated from Ganei Tal in the framework of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005 eventually moved to the environs of the southern city of Ashkelon, where they established a new settlement on land that had previously been cultivated as a corn field. For eight years, most of them wandered from one temporary settlement to another, waiting for the construction of their new homes in the new settlement, named after the original one in the Gaza Strip, which had been destroyed.
