While most Gaza settlers wage a fierce ideological campaign against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's withdrawal plan, the residents of this quiet settlement right on the Israeli border are in a quandary.
They don't want to leave what one resident called paradise, but they are not sure an Israeli pullout from the turbulent Gaza Strip is wrong either.
PHOTO: AP
As Likud Party members prepared for a referendum today that would decide Elei Sinai's future, people here found themselves watching white-knuckled from the sidelines.
"We are not politically involved. We are not fanatics," said Riki Kigelman, a 39-year-old mother of four who has lived here for 14 years.
Kigelman said she believed the current standoff with the Palestinians could not go on forever, but she didn't think pulling out of Gaza without a peace agreement would solve the problem.
Then again, maybe she is mistaken, she said.
"I'm not convinced that it is right to live here. I'm not convinced that it is wrong," Kigelman said.
Palestinians loathe the 21 settlements in the coastal strip, seeing them as encroachment on land they claim for a future state. The settlements also cut off major Palestinian traffic arteries.
Sharon said that in the absence of peace moves, his "disengagement plan" is meant to separate Palestinians from Israelis and more than three years of violence.
Lobbying
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 four small West Bank settlements.
Initial polls showed the plan would easily pass today's ruling party 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, held demonstrations on street corners and plastered walls around Israel with posters calling a withdrawal a "victory for terror."
Many of those activists came from Gush Katif, the main bloc of settlements deep in Gaza that is filled with ideologically driven hardliners who deeply believe in the concept of "Greater Israel" -- which would include all of Gaza and the West Bank, both seized in the 1967 Middle East war, in Israel's territory.
Elei Sinai and the neighboring settlements of Duggit and Nissanit are more subdued places, with people lured to Gaza by government subsidies and a bucolic lifestyle they are unable to 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 posters protesting Sharon's plan hang on the entrance to the settlement. Only a handful of people oppose a withdrawal.
Bedroom community
Others, such as Itzhik Levy, 37, who is working on a large addition to his house, choose to ignore the referendum campaign.
"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 under Israel's peace agreement with Egypt, but that core is a tiny fraction of the 85 families that currently live in this bedroom community just meters from a razor wire fence marking the border with Israel.
Unlike Gush Katif settlers who ride armored vehicles for the journey through Gaza into Israel, residents of Elei Sinai take a short access road.
The Muslim call to prayer drifting in from the other side of the army's lines is one of the few reminders of the settlement's location.
Residents compare their community to the best of small towns, where 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.
Attacks by Palestinian militants that regularly hit other Gaza settlements are rare here.
But on Oct. 2, 2001, two Palestinian militants breached the settlement's fence and killed Assaf Yitzhaki, 20, and his girlfriend, Liron Harpaz, 19.
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