A town square without a town by Nir Hasson September 21, 2005 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/627265.html In recent weeks, Public Works Administration highway workers have been removing roadside signs bearing the name "Gush Katif." Some of the signs were disassembled, while others were taken by collectors with a sense of history. Nearly the last material reminder of Gush Katif, the signs are rapidly disappearing from the nation's roads. Even the most pessimistic settlers did not believe that it would be possible to remove evidence of the settlements existence so quickly. Only a month has passed since the evacuation, and Gush Katif appears to have never been. Soon the names of Ganei Tal, Neveh Dekalim, Rafiah Yam and others will vanish like those of Sadot, Priel, Ugda and Dikla, Sinai settlements which were obliterated as part of the peace treaty with Egypt. One site that remains indestructible is the enormous and highly-wrought Gush Katif Internet site, Katif.Net, including its English language site at english.katif.net. When the Gush was leveled down to its foundations, the site's owners, the Sander family, decided to continue to operate the Web site to address the needs of evacuated settlers. The Sanders are also establishing an additional site, which serves as a sort of virtual museum, to document the life stories of former Gush residents. Motti Sander, a former resident of Ganei Tal, does not match the profile of the average webmaster: The 54-year-old farmer, sporting shorts and sandals, is a father of six and a grandfather of five. Until the evacuation, he earned most of his his living from an enormous nursery where he raised house plants. But when the Web site he created five years ago became the quasi-official site of Gush Katif settlers and their leadership, it became an important important avocation and an occasional source of additional income. Now that he has left the hothouses behind and his family has moved into a guest house at Kibbutz Hafez Haim, Sander devotes most of his time to the Web site. "In the media and on the street, Gush Katif has ceased to be a topic of discussion," writes the webmaster in introducing the new site. "So in order that we should not forget, that our children, grandchildren and future generations will know the wonderful story of Gush Katif, we decided to open a new Katif.Net Web site which, together with other groups, will work to document the Gush Katif story."The new site, as yet unavailable to the general public, is up and running in a dry run. It includes a list of all of the evacuated settlements, but only a few families have registered their names thus far. Sander has requested that each family provide information pertaining to their period of residence in Gush Katif, their "expulsion date" and their current address. When Gush Katif was still a vibrant community, the Web site served as a central platform for the battle against the evacuation. "It is impossible to describe Gush Katif and the struggle without mentioning the Web site," says Eran Sternberg, former spokesman of the Gaza Coast Regional Council, and one of the best-known characters in the struggle against the evacuation. "It documented everything that happened in Gush Katif. It began as a news site and was transformed into a public relations site. All of Gush Katif is contained in the site - even minor events that the press did not cover." Sander says that when he first established the site, he thought that pictures would be sufficient "to tell the story of the Gush." A short time later, the intifada erupted and mortar shells began to fall in Gush Katif settlements. Sander became a field reporter, riding a small tractoron all-terrain vehicle, armed with a camera, to every site where a mortar shell landed. Newspapers, including Haaretz, occasionally bought his pictures. His 20-year-old son Elhanan, enrolled in a pre-military preparatory program at Machon Lev in Jerusalem, designed the site in its current format - green and yellow, square upon square, on a white background. His father updates the news on the site several times a day. Mortar meter During the months of political conflict over Gush Katif, the Web site became part of the well-oiled Gush Katif propaganda machine, and the most up-to-date bulletin board of events and announcements for Gush residents. Even Gaza Coast Regional Council head Avner Shimoni, who was considered to be Sander's political rival, published letters to residents on the site. Letters from the head of the Gush Katif Security Department, Ami Shaked, which began to appear in April, also roused the interest of the site's readership. Shaked, a secular Jew, surprised many with his substantial knowledge of Jewish sources. His call for residents to close ranks and refrain from violent resistance met with the enthusiastic response of a public that was "searching for leadership," according to Sander. Sternberg says the site was the first forum in which there was open public discussion, initiated by grieving families, regarding the transfer of graves from Gush Katif. Also, a vehement exchange developed on the site regarding the use of the yellow Star of David in the campaign and comparison of the evacuation to the Holocaust. Gush Katif evacuees remember two issues championed by the Web site in the days that preceded the evacuation. The first concerned opposition to the pollution of reservoirs maintained by the Gaza Region Farms company in the Eshkol region by sewage from the Negev. The second was a fight to relocate the gas plant which Muasi area Palestinians planned to establish between Neveh Dekalim and Ganei Tal. The central feature of the site, which expanded over the years, was the news-flash window, updated 20-30 times each day. Every mortar shell, demonstration, residents meeting or relevant statement by public figures appeared in the news window. No other right-wing Israeli Internet site could keep up with that of Gush Katif, including large sites operated by well-endowed bodies like the Yesha Council and right-wing parties. In fact, few private sites in Israel are updated as frequently as Katif.Net. The news window also featured op-eds and commentary from the press under the heading, "Worth a Quote." "That is where I occasionally placed unpopular opinions," Sander explains, "like articles from Haim Baram's Hagada Hasmalit [The Left Bank] site. I told people who became angry at me that we need to learn about the other side as well." The Gush Katif settlers' campaign headquarters published a now defunct mini-site on Katif.Net. The "Gush Katif Viewpoint" opinion page also featured lengthy pieces written by Gush Katif residents and right-wing activists, who frequently opposed the "moderate" tactics of Gush Katif campaign headquarters. Despite this balance of opinion, Sander retained the right to observe his own red lines. "I refused to include statements comparing the evacuation to the Holocaust," he says. "There are elements which are reminiscent, but it just is not so. And I refused to include personal attacks against Gush residents." A "mortar meter" at the top of the homepage counted the fall of every Kassam rocket or mortar shell in Gush Katif. The meter had recorded more than 5,800 strikes by the time the evacuation took place. The meter has also been removed from the Internet. Reports from Gaza In the days preceding the disengagement, the site registered hundreds of thousands of hits every day. During the month of the disengagement, 30,765,197 page impressions were recorded. After the evacuation, the number of hits decreased, and during the past month, the site registered about 6 million hits. Despite the site's promotional and ideological significance, it was also established to meet financial goals. Bank Leumi has been advertising on the site for many months, and has even launched a recent campaign directed at the children of Gush Katif evacuees, offering a "school bag to every customer," for children of bank clientele who resided in Gush Katif. Sander is now looking for advertisers to sponsor the new site. Katif.Net also operates an on-line souvenir store. T-shirts are available for $8.50, and a "We shall neither forget nor forgive" bumper sticker costs $3.50. A small bottle of Gush Katif beach sand will set buyers back $10. Prices are indeed high but, according to Sander, they barely cover the expense of maintaining the site. Sander describes days of personal crisis, even when the site was flourishing. "There were moments when I asked myself why I need this, but the feedback from readers helped me go on, and the fact that I was the shofar [mouthpiece] of Gush Katif," Sander says. The authorities recognized his efforts as well. Two months ago, he was invited to an editors meeting with the IDF censor, and members of his family carry press cards attributed to Katif.Net. The site was actually updated less frequently during the final days of Gush Katif, when it was flooded by readers. "It was very difficult for me. I almost never left my home. I sensed that it was going to happen," Sander says. A day before the forced evacuation, the Sander family left their home in Ganei Tal to move to a guest house in Kibbutz Hafez Haim. Nearly all of the families from Ganei Tal settlement joined them later. "The site was not updated for 20 hours, until I arrived here. I found a computer in one of the offices and continued to update," he recalls. When the evacuation was completed, the question arose as to what he should do with the site. "I considered closing it," says Sander. "What was the point? Wasn't Gush Katif dead?" He conducted a poll on the site, and the vast majority of surfers responded that they would like to see the site continue. Sander decided to continue operating the site in its present format, and at the same time redevelop it. He purchased a shipping container, located behind the family's guest house, to house the computers that he brought from Ganei Tal. The new Katif.Net and all its subsidiaries, is operated from that container. Updated information from former Gush residents, scattered throughout the country, continues to flow to the site. Individuals lament the difficulties of daily life, publish useful telephone numbers and describe heated arguments regarding the future location of new settlements. The site's news-flash window has become the closest thing to the central square which adjoined the local council building in Neveh Dekalim, where the Gush Katif bulletin board was posted and residents regularly met. Security alerts pertaining to the Gaza Strip also continue to appear on the site. "I am happy to present evidence that the [disengagement] plan did not bring peace," says Sander. The picture which now appears on the homepage portrays the memorial service commemorating the demise of Ganei Tal, held this week at Hafez Haim. Sander does not regret his decision to keep the site open. "It provides me with an occupation and a reason to wake up in the morning. I don't sit on the lawn all day," he says. He points to a child's poem, written by Yael Harmati and published on the site : My sister at the university Filled out all kinds of forms. But she mainly left blanks Because Daddy is not work ing And we don't have a home, An address, or a number. Only the telephone is still connected.