Sabar, 11, walks around the southern town of Tel Arad barefoot. He limps, has a severe disability and bad eyesight, and has difficulty lifting objects with his hands.
His father, whose orange identity card designates his temporary-resident status, is unemployed and does not have the money to fund the medication and treatment his son requires.
Before Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Sabar and his family, from the Gaza town of Dahaniyeh, received medical services at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, with the assistance of the Civil Administration. But now, eight months later, 44 Dahaniyeh families are living in temporary structures in Tel Arad – many without the medical insurance they used to have.
Dahaniyeh was known as the "collaborators village," and was home to 65 Egyptian families.
Fearing for their lives, the residents rejected the state’s proposal that they remain in Gaza after the pullout, and petitioned the High Court of Justice to be allowed to live in Israel. The High Court granted entry to the families pending a final decision.
With the assistance of the Health Ministry, some 40 families moved into Tel Arad.
Since then, the residents say, the Israeli authorities have neglected them, and they have asked the High Court to give all of them the same rights that Jewish evacuees received under the Evacuation Compensation Law.
The 10 families with Israeli citizenship (signified by blue identity cards) are eligible for the same compensation packages, which can amount to hundreds of thousands of shekels, but the 15 families with orange ID cards are getting no more than some NIS 50,000 each for their homes. There are an additional 11 families in which some members have orange ID cards and some have blue ones.
Israel’s relationship with the Dahaniyeh residents began shortly after the Six-Day War, when Egyptians who used to live in Dahaniyeh transferred land to Israel in exchange for land in the Gaza Strip.
"My father and grandfather gave land to the State of Israel, and in exchange they built us Dahaniyeh," said Sabar’s father, Abed Samia Shatiwi, who belongs to the Armilat clan from Tel Arad.
"Everyone got farmland. We lived in houses with electricity and water. Now they brought us 40 years backward when they tossed us here."
The Dahaniyeh residents feel they can’t return to their land, because the Palestinians and Egyptians consider them traitors.
They are also having trouble finding jobs, especially those that allow them to stay with their families. Many are employed in agriculture in the Kerem Shalom region, but due to the distance from Tel Arad, they often leave their families for several weeks and sleep near their work.
