Netzer Hazani

Netzer Hazani was a religious farming moshav in the Gush Katif settlement bloc, positioned between Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip.[1] It belonged to the largest group of Gaza settlements, the Katif bloc, which lay along the southern Gaza coastline.[6]

The community combined religious communal life with an agricultural economy centered on greenhouses and other intensive farming methods. It was evacuated in August 2005 and subsequently re-established in central Israel.

Netzer Hazani arose within a much longer history of Jewish life in Gaza. Jewish communities existed there in ancient, medieval, and modern periods; Jews were forced to leave amid the Arab riots of 1929, and Kfar Darom was established in 1946 before organized Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip resumed after the Six-Day War.[6]

At the end of May 1973, members of the Ezra youth movement and groups from the Association of Religious Moshavim established the Nahal outpost Katif between Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah.[2][4] Nahal soldiers laid the initial agricultural infrastructure, and within months vegetable greenhouses covered the surrounding sand dunes.[2] As the outpost moved toward civilian status, it was renamed Netzer Hazani in honor of welfare minister Michael Hazani, described by one source as the "father of religious settlement."[2][4]

Sources differ on the dates assigned to the community's civilian establishment. Encyclopedia.com's chronology says Katif became a civilian moshav in 1976 and was renamed Netzer Hazani in 1977, although its individual entry gives 1973 as the establishment year.[1] A 2005 Israeli government report instead says it was founded as a civilian moshav by 12 religious families in 1997.[5] Ynet records the arrival of an additional settlement nucleus in February 1997, while the Jewish Virtual Library lists the founding year as "1973/1977+," reflecting dates supplied by different organizations.[2][9]

Netzer Hazani occupied the third of five planned settlement "fingers" within Gush Katif, alongside Katif, Kfar Darom, and Ganei Tal.[1] The plan's stated aims included creating a buffer zone in response to attacks originating in the Gaza Strip and controlling communications between densely populated Arab areas.[1]

Netzer Hazani's recorded population rose from 301 in 1999 to 312 in 2000, 314 in 2001, 316 in 2002, and 330 in 2003.[9]

Sources provide different family counts for the period immediately before the disengagement. A July 2005 government report listed 70 families, while a 2025 JNS retrospective described the original community as consisting of 65 religious-Zionist families.[5][7] Contemporary reports from Ynet and Globes placed the figure at approximately 80 families, with Ynet reporting around 400 residents.[2][4] The available sources do not reconcile these counts, which may reflect different dates or counting methods.

The economy of Netzer Hazani rested heavily on hothouse agriculture. Residents grew organic vegetables and a wide variety of spices for export and also bred fish in fishponds.[5]

Gush Katif agriculture more broadly developed into a multimillion-dollar industry encompassing approximately 400 farms. Products included bug-free lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, pineapples, and flowers, cultivated in the area's sand dunes through greenhouse and hydroponic methods.[7][10]

Netzer Hazani's religious identity placed it within a wider Gush Katif network of synagogues, schools, yeshivot, seminaries, and other communal institutions. The Gaza settlements included religious, secular, and mixed communities, with Netzer Hazani listed among the religious communities.[6]

The greenhouses surrounding Netzer Hazani were among its defining physical and economic features. The earliest greenhouses were laid out across the sand dunes by Nahal soldiers, and by 2005 the settlement's hothouses supported the cultivation of organic vegetables and spices.[2][5]

The synagogue plaza became the focal point of the community's final gathering during the evacuation. Residents assembled there to sing and recite Psalms while facing Torah scrolls removed from the synagogue before boarding buses.[11]

As of 2025, the former settlement site was largely a tent-filled humanitarian zone housing Arab refugees from Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah. Some former hothouses remained standing, including structures purchased with international funds for the benefit of local Arab residents.[7]

Gush Katif settlements endured sustained terrorist attacks from October 2000 onward, including gunfire, suicide bombers, and Qassam rockets. Across the bloc, approximately 4,000 shells struck settlements and 12 people were killed.[1]

Netzer Hazani suffered several direct attacks. On November 21, 2000, Itamar Yefet, 18, was shot and killed by Palestinian sniper fire at the Gush Katif junction.[12] On April 28, 2001, five mortars were fired at Netzer Hazani, striking a recreation center and wounding six civilian youths, one seriously. A group calling itself The Four Martyrs claimed affiliation with Fatah, while Fatah disavowed the attack and denied knowledge of the group.[13] On May 17, 2001, a mortar shell damaged a family home in the community; the family was away visiting their son, who had been wounded in the April attack.[13]

Rabbi Yitzhak Arama, 40, of Netzer Hazani was shot and killed on December 20, 2002, while driving with his wife and six children along the Kissufim corridor road to a pre-wedding Sabbath celebration in Afula. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.[12]

Israel's disengagement plan was a unilateral initiative undertaken during the second intifada rather than as part of a negotiated agreement with the PLO.[3] The Israeli cabinet approved the plan in June 2004 and the Knesset approved it in October 2004.[14] Its stated goals included reducing terrorism and granting Israeli citizens the maximum possible level of security.[3]

In the weeks before the evacuation, Netzer Hazani residents and youth constructed a temporary "sukkah neighborhood" in the settlement's eastern area. Plans called for 35 improvised units, with 14 sukkot already standing and 21 more under construction, allowing homes to accommodate additional families expected to arrive in solidarity.[15] By the eve of the evacuation, 25 families had signed compensation agreements, although passive resistance by some of the remaining residents was expected.[2]

The formal evacuation was completed without violent confrontations and was characterized as "quiet and restrained."[11] Before Israeli forces entered, local youths gathered around the entrance. Each family then returned home to receive the soldiers, who listened to residents before asking them to leave.[11] Residents assembled at the synagogue plaza, sang, and recited Psalms before Torah scrolls removed from the synagogue. They then boarded buses to the Western Wall for prayer before continuing to Hispin in the Golan Heights.[11]

Accounts use different milestones when dating the disengagement. A 2025 JNS retrospective says Netzer Hazani residents were forced to leave on August 15, 2005, while Ynet's contemporaneous account describes the community's formal evacuation on August 18.[7][11] INSS dates the overall operation from August 15 through September 11, whereas the ADL says the official evacuation began on August 17, all Gaza settlers had been removed by August 22, and the IDF officially left Gaza on September 12.[3][14]

The broader disengagement removed more than 8,000 residents from 25 settlements: 21 in Gaza and four in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[14] Buildings across the evacuated Gaza settlements were razed after residents left, and no Jews remained in the Gaza Strip once the process was completed.[6]

The years following the evacuation proved deeply difficult for many of Netzer Hazani's former residents. A 2010 state investigative commission issued a damning verdict on the government's handling of the wider evacuee population, finding: "The State of Israel failed in dealing with those evacuated."[3] Its findings included people living in temporary caravan sites, delays in permanent housing and public buildings, and an unemployment rate among evacuees twice that of the general population.[3]

Residents' accounts described the personal effects of these problems. One former resident said of a proposed temporary housing site at Ein Tzurim: "We went to see the place and found a plowed field. There is no infrastructure, nothing that looks suitable for living. If they put up caravillas, what will happen in winter? To this day we have not met a government representative who tried to help."[16]

Another resident described the emotional and economic rupture of displacement: "We lived at a high standard of living in Netzer Hazani and suddenly we are in need. From a contributing person who served in the IDF and never needed favors, I became, in the state's eyes, a burden."[16] Uncertainty about relocation compounded the difficulty of rebuilding economically. One resident recounted that community members had been told for three months that they would soon move to Ein Tzurim, making it functionally impossible to seek or find work.[16]

Two years after the disengagement, community members including Anita Tucker were still negotiating with the government over a contract to build a permanent new community in the Yesodot area, while residents remained in temporary quarters.[17] Before the evacuation, Tucker had continued working her celery farm until the end, stocked her home with more than a month's supply of food, and purchased a generator against a possible electricity cutoff.[17]

In 2010, the National Planning and Building Council recommended a permanent community at Yesodot, a religious-ultra-Orthodox moshav near Gedera, specifically for Netzer Hazani evacuees. The plan was intended to allow residents to maintain communal life in a familiar framework.[18]

Determined to remain together, Netzer Hazani's former residents rebuilt their community approximately 20 kilometers east of Ashdod, at Yesodot in central Israel.[10][7] Ten years after the evacuation, rebuilding and rehabilitation remained central parts of residents' lives.[10]

By 2025, the rebuilt religious-Zionist community had doubled in size from an original count of 65 families.[8] It re-established a synagogue, schools, and social clubs named in memory of fallen residents, and planted olive trees salvaged from the former settlements.[7] A youth center was established in memory of Yochanan Hilburg, whose remains were reinterred in the military section of the Gush Katif cemetery in Nitzan.[8]

Farmer Isaac Cohen was among the few Netzer Hazani growers to re-establish an agricultural operation. His son Elad followed him into farming and built a sprouts business producing alfalfa and bean sprouts for sale throughout Israel.[7]

The emotional bond with the original community remained strong. During a later Israeli ground offensive in Gaza, Aviel Tucker's son Dan — who had been three years old when his family left — telephoned his father and said, "I'm coming home." Aviel understood him to mean Netzer Hazani and gave him directions toward the former settlement.[7]