jerusalem | With his family huddling around him in his Gush Katif home, Alon surfs through Web sites outlining his options after disengagement.
Alon, who asked not to reveal his last name, pours over data from local municipalities, the Disengagement Authority (SELA) and the Kibbutz Movement. Detailed terrain maps of resettlement areas, cost-estimate calculators and three-dimensional models of possible homes flash across his screen.
Disengagement has gone online.
Government ministries and local municipalities have found the Internet one of the most useful means of reaching the settlers. The Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza estimates that more than two-thirds of settlers have Internet at home, half of them using high-speed access. Schools and libraries also provide free Internet access.
The Ashkelon and Nitzan municipalities, set to receive the bulk of the evacuated settlers, and SELA have set up offices in the Gush Katif area.
However, many settlers say there are social pressures to maintain a distance from such overt focal points of government assistance, so as not to be seen to be “giving in” to the disengagement plan.
The Internet, however, offers an anonymous source of information. Settlers can visit Web sites such as the Ashkelon Municipality site and view housing selections there without having to publicly admit any interest in relocation options.
“My family and I are firmly opposed to disengagement,” Alon stresses. “But if it does happen I want to have some idea of what we will do the day after.”
To that end, Alon has visited the SELA Web site, downloading the forms and using the online calculator to get an estimate of what he might expect in compensation for his property. Using that estimate, he has begun to look at plots in the Nitzan area offered for permanent building. He has also looked at online job boards in the Nitzan and Ashkelon areas, for construction work he might find.
The Internet was his only means of obtaining this information, he says.
One of his neighbors, he goes on, was seen visiting the SELA office where he is reputed to have signed onto a housing option with the government. “Everyone now looks bitterly at him and his family, because there is a feeling that they have sold out,” says Alon. “I don’t want to get the same reaction from my community.”
A SELA spokesman described the Internet as “really the best way we have of delivering information to the settlers. We have found that our pamphlets don’t always reach the people they should, and many are scared to come into the office. And newspapers don’t always get the story right.”
He added that many settlers who had come into the SELA offices to sign agreements, had done so after reviewing their options online. “E-mail has also proven invaluable as the settlers can set up an account under any name they want and ask questions freely,” said the spokesman. Still, he added, “At some point they need to actually come in and sign papers.”
Many settlers privately complain that some key Web sites are slow and often faulty. When The Jerusalem Post tried to access the SELA site, one of the five downloadable forms was not working. Many of the maps and housing models also used graphics that could only be viewed on a high-speed computer.
“There are always problems,” said the spokesman, “but we are working to make sure that the Web site is as operational as possible.