Dear friends of Moshav Ganei Tal

Re: Ganei Tal: Past, present and future

First of all I would like to thank you for taking the time to hear our story.

Ganei Tal: The past

In the summer of 1977 a group of twelve young families with a great vision came to Kfar Darom in the center of the Gaza Strip, where before an agricultural military unit had been stationed. During the first year eighteen additional families came (first only the men) and in the fall of 1978 the thirty families moved to Moshav Katif, waiting for the construction of Moshav Ganei Tal.

In the summer of 1979, after the Settlement Department of the Jewish Agency had completed building the houses of Ganei Tal, the thirty families moved into their permanent village, Ganei Tal, a Moshav of the Hapoel Hamizrahi movement.

The Moshav members did not have time to put their homes in order, because the season was late and they did not want to miss the agricultural year. They worked non-stop to construct the greenhouses, they sowed, planted, watered, fertilized, and continuously prayed for success in their endeavor. Veteran farmers and our parents looked on worriedly; they considered us a bit daft: "You want to grow vegetables in the sand?"

We came to a yellow desert, a beautiful landscape, a deep blue sea, and a row of date palms, the Muwasi, on the shoreline. The land next to the houses was bare: no trees, no flowers, no birds and no rain. Our Arab neighbors did not dare work this land: "The land is cursed", they said, "only madmen would think of growing anything in the sand".

You of course know full well that willpower, prayer and faith can change everything. The birds began to come, more rainfall came, too, the flowers bloomed, the yards sported lawns, trees and other plants; the desert had become an earthly paradise.

As the years went by we were blessed with children. Every year new families came to live in the Moshav, schools were built in Ganei Tal and in Gush Katif, a large synagogue was erected in the center of the village, in addition to a members' club, offices, a Bnei Akiva branch, youth club, sports fields, a grocery, a filling station, and more. Gush Katif had schools, yeshivas, a girls' high school, advanced yeshivas, and a pre-military preparation school which served all of Gush Katif.

At first everyone grew the same kind of crops, but over the years each farmer came to specialize in a different crop: sherry tomatoes, peppers, spices, worm- free leafy vegetables, organic vegetables, nurseries for domestic plants and geraniums. Most of our produce was exported. We began with 60 dunams of farmland in 1979. In the summer of 2005 we had 1500 dunams.

In August 2005 IDF soldiers came on orders of the Israeli government and removed the Moshav members, ninety families, about four-hundred people, some of them already second- and third-generation residents. The members had decided to move together as one family to the Hafetz Haim Guest House, where we stayed for two-and-a-half months before we moved to the temporary housing camp at Yad Binyamin, where we are today.

The authorities had promised "a solution for every settler". We thought that within a year or two we would build homes and work the land again. But today, more than four years later, we are still in our temporary camp. Most of our members did not return to agriculture; many have been unable to pursue a career of any kind. Many families are still deeply distressed at everything they had lost in Gush Katif.

The Ganei Tal community consisted of over seventy families which lived in Gush Katif for almost twenty-eight years. Most of them made a living as farmers, others worked in the liberal professions. When we left Gush Katif most members of the Moshav were between fifty and fifty-five years old. Now we are nearing sixty, and have yet to begin building our homes and the farm which we shall get together with the plot for the house.

A note of optimism

Over the years since the expulsion a team of Ganei Tal members has worked hard to arrive at a contract with the government for rebuilding the Moshav. In November 2008 a contract was signed, whereby we are to get land on Kibbutz Hafetz Haim near the town of Gedera, within the Nahal Soreq Regional Council, which contains five religious villages.

We of the Ganei Tal community have all stayed together. Together we left, together we lived for nearly three months in the Hafetz Haim Guest House, together we moved to the temporary housing at Yad Binyamin, together we coped with moments of desperation when we thought we would never again have a real home again, and thank God, today we stand together at the start line of our "marathon run" to rebuild our home.

We are grateful that we have been able to remain one community, one family

Getting the Israeli government to sign the contract with the Moshav was not an easy matter. In February 2009, two months after the contracts were signed, tractors began to prepare the land. Since then we have seen much progress. The plots are marked, utilities have been put in place, water pipes have been laid in the ground, and some members have already submitted plans for their homes. The Moshav's first building, a kindergarten, is already under construction. The Jewish Agency has contracted the Jewish National Fund to prepare the farm lands, work on which has already begun.

The new Ganei Tal will have up to 215 private homes, to be built in the coming years, and a number of public buildings, including a synagogue and Beth Midrash, a home for the rabbi, a ritual bath, a youth club, a members' club, a memorial room to commemorate the original Moshav in Gush Katif, crèches, kindergartens, offices, and a large, green park all around and between the new Moshav's streets.

Anyone who comes to Kibbutz Hafetz Haim these days can see the new development progressing every day. A year ago cotton was grown here, and now mother earth has changed her face, straightened out her body, and opened her arms to invite the expelled people of Gush Katif to once again begin the great Mitzvah of settling the land. It is inexpressibly exciting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and to realize that in a year or two we will again have our own real home, like all other people.

This is true Zionism.

In the name of all our members, we thank you and invite you to visit the area where the new Moshav is now under construction, to obtain a personal impression and to see how a desolate place can be made to bloom in the center of the country as well.

 This is true Zionism.

To see a video & pictures on Ganei Tal, use the following links:

http://english.katif.net/index.php?sub=30        http://english.katif.net/index.php?id=2274&sub=32

Moti Sender – Ganei Tal.