Tamar Nizri
Tamar NizriIdo ben Porat

In light of the letter sent by Amona women to the Prime Minister, Amona evictee Tamar Nizri spoke with Arutz Sheva about the hardship entailed in living in the youth hostel in Ofra, where evictees have been placed for the last two months.

“A woman is the basis of the home and we, as women, feel that we’re fighting a daily war for our homes, to maintain a family atmosphere in difficult conditions.”

“Sitting as a family around the table or meeting at the end of the day has become a difficult task. It’s hard to find the time that everyone is together, everything here is public, everyone eats together and there’s no sense of family. The rooms are small and cramped and full of beds such that there is no place to eat, so everyone goes to the dining hall to eat. After Israeli Independence Day we took the food to the room to eat alone on the couches. It’s not normal.”

Nizri called on the Prime Minister to fulfill his promise. “What gives us the strength to hold on in difficult conditions such as these is that soon, this summer, we are moving to a new community. But in recent days there are all sorts of factors which could delay the establishment of the town by several months or even years. It’s very hard and causes us great frustration; it weakens our powers, and therefore we turn to the Prime Minister and call on him to stand up to the pressures and immediately establish the new town.”

She hopes that the fate of Amona evictees will not be the same as those evicted from Gush Katif. “There are voices of people trying to make us despair which call not to listen to the promises and move on. I met someone evicted from Gush Katif who only moved into a house 11 years later, and I hope we won’t suffer the same fate.”

“They tell us that we are paying too heavy a price, but we are ready to pay the price to maintain the community and the space that we created; if it weren’t for this hope, each one of us would have simply rented a house and moved on. But we have created a community that has been through trauma together, and we want to thrive and continue together in a new location.”