JNS.org/ June 5, 2025
Second in a series on twenty years since the Gaza pullout
After Hamas stormed Israel’s border on Oct. 7, 2023, and slaughtered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 others, the Gush Katif Heritage Center—the national museum commemorating the legacy of the Jewish communities of Gaza and northern Samaria—faced a dilemma.
How should it publicly respond to the tragedy that its management believed was a direct result of the sacrifice of the Gush Katif communities in the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip?
“We felt like we couldn’t do our usual tour, taking people through the Visitors Center, as we did before Oct. 7,” said Laurence Beziz, project manager of the center in Nitzan, near the site of the former “Caravilla” camp that housed Gush Katif evacuees for years after their displacement.
“Whatever we would add couldn’t be in the style of ‘We told you so.’ It doesn’t fit with who we are and our timing, with anything. It’s the worst thing to say,” she asserted.
Beziz speaks fluent Hebrew with a French accent. She made aliyah from Paris in 1981, at age 20, making her home in Gadid, an agricultural settlement in Gush Katif. Gadid, founded in 1982, consisted of more than 60 families before they were uprooted during the disengagement ordered by the government of Ariel Sharon in 2005.
She now lives with her husband in Be’er Ganim near Ashkelon, where about half of the Gadid community rebuilt their lives.
Back in Gush Katif, she worked in the urban center of Neve Dekalim in various organizational and social welfare roles. Playing an active role in the Gush Katif Heritage Center’s establishment in 2008 blended her skills in non-profit management with her deep desire to tell the story of the community she loved—and lost.
Read the rest in JNS.org: https://www.jns.org/former-gush-katif-resident-laurence-beziz-we-wont-say-we-told-you-so/
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