Settlers face dilemma with today's vote

ELEI SINAI, Gaza Strip - While most Israelis living in Gaza are waging a fierce campaign against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's withdrawal plan, people in this quiet settlement right on the Israeli border are in a confused daze.

They don't want to leave what one of them calls paradise, but they are not sure an Israeli pullout from the turbulent coastal strip is wrong.

As Likud Party members prepare to vote in their referendum today that will decide the future of Elei Sinai and 20 other settlements in Gaza, people here are watching white-knuckled from the sidelines.

"We are not politically involved. We are not fanatics," said Riki Kigelman, a mother of four who has lived here for 14 years.

The standoff with the Palestinians can't go on forever, she said, but she doesn't think withdrawing without a peace agreement would solve the problem.

Then again, maybe she's mistaken, she said.

"I'm not convinced that it is right to live here. I'm not convinced that it is wrong," Kigelman, 39, said.

Palestinians loathe the 21 Gaza settlements, which they see as encroachment on land they claim for a future state, and which cut off major Palestinian roads.

Sharon says that in the absence of peace moves, his "disengagement plan" is meant to separate Palestinians from Israelis and end 31/2 years of violence.

Under the plan, Israel would pull out of Gaza, where 7,500 Israelis live on one-third the land and 1.3-million Palestinians share the remainder, and from four small West Bank settlements.

Initial polls showed the plan would easily pass the referendum. But recent surveys show a sharp swing against it.

That change came after a massive campaign waged by the settlers, who personally lobbied many of the 193,000 Likud voters, demonstrated on street corners and plastered walls with posters calling a withdrawal a "victory for terror."

Many protesters came from the main bloc of settlements deep in Gaza, where hard-liners deeply believe in the concept of "Greater Israel."

Elei Sinai and neighboring Duggit and Nissanit are far more subdued, filled with people lured to Gaza by government subsidies and a bucolic lifestyle they couldn't afford in Israel.

"We didn't come here for ideology," Kigelman said. "I came here because I was looking for a nice, quiet place to raise my children."

No protest posters hang on the entrance to the settlement. Only a few people oppose a withdrawal.

Others, like Yitzhak Levy, 37, who is working on a large addition to his house, choose to ignore the referendum.

"I don't want to think about that now. So I just continue to build," he said.

Elei Sinai was founded by families evacuated from Sinai when Israel traded the peninsula for peace with Egypt. But that core is a tiny fraction of the 85 families living in this bedroom community.

A fence marks the border with Israel. But unlike other settlers who ride through Gaza to Israel in armored vehicles, Elei Sinai residents take a short access road.

The Muslim call to prayer is one of the few reminders of the settlement's location.

People here say that as in the best small towns, everyone knows each other and looks after each other's kids.

Children play soccer unsupervised and run through the neighborhood with their dogs in tow.

"I know that for peace it's the right thing to do, but I don't feel that it's the right time," teacher Shosh Schatz, 39, said. "I don't feel that it will fix the problem. It won't change the hate they have for us."

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