Summary
Yamit, the Sinai settlement district whose evacuation of 5,000 Jewish settlers by April 23, 1982, under the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, Lustick treats as the traumatic failure that split Gush Emunim between outreach and violence (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2950-3250).
Details
- The Likud government intended to complete the withdrawal from Sinai by April 23, 1982, including the evacuation of 5,000 Jewish settlers from the Yamit district, in fulfilment of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2950-3050).
- Yamit businessmen and farmers had moved to the district with official encouragement and lavish government assistance and had established a comfortable and profitable life; rabbis in the Movement to Halt the Retreat in Sinai held Yamit an integral part of the Land of Israel whose abandonment would severely interrupt redemption (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2950-3100).
- The evacuation was completed by unarmed soldiers without serious injury, despite reports of armed resistance preparations and suicide threats by Kahane supporters; the Yamit Yeshiva Hesder and several groups of Yamit settlers were reestablished in settlements across the border in the Gaza Strip (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 3050-3150).
- Gush Emunim leaders later blamed their failure to prevent the April 1982 withdrawal from Yamit on the absence of an effective political organization, and attempted to turn the anniversary of the “uprooting of Yamit” into a national day of remembrance and rededication, without success beyond their own ranks (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 3, lines 2700-2800, lines 3050-3200).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Movement to Halt the Retreat in Sinai, Gush Emunim, Camp David Accords