Yamit ( he, ימית) was an
Israeli settlement
Israeli settlements, or Israeli colonies, are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, overwhelmingly of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The international community considers Israeli se ...
in the northern part of the
Sinai Peninsula
The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai (now usually ) (, , cop, Ⲥⲓⲛⲁ), is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is a l ...
with a population of about 2,500 people. Yamit was established during
Israel's occupation of the peninsula from the end of the 1967
Six-Day War
The Six-Day War (, ; ar, النكسة, , or ) or June War, also known as the 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states (primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, S ...
until that part of the Sinai was handed over to
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
in April 1982, as part of the terms of the 1979
Egypt–Israel peace treaty
The Egypt–Israel peace treaty ( ar, معاهدة السلام المصرية الإسرائيلية, Mu`āhadat as-Salām al-Misrīyah al-'Isrā'īlīyah; he, הסכם השלום בין ישראל למצרים, ''Heskem HaShalom Bein Yisrael ...
. Prior to the return of the land to Egypt, all the homes were evacuated and bulldozed.
History
Located in the Rafah Plain region south of the
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip (;The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p.761 "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory under the control of the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza.. ...
, Yamit was envisioned as a large city for 200,000 people that would create a buffer zone between the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. It was built on land in a 140,000
dunam
A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount ...
(14,000
hectare
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...
) area from which some 1,500
Bedouin
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and A ...
families of the Al-Ramilat tribes had been secretly expelled under the direct orders of the then-defense minister
Moshe Dayan
Moshe Dayan ( he, משה דיין; 20 May 1915 – 16 October 1981) was an Israeli military leader and politician. As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–1958) du ...
and Southern Command head
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon (; ; ; also known by his diminutive Arik, , born Ariel Scheinermann, ; 26 February 1928 – 11 January 2014) was an Israeli general and politician who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Israel from March 2001 until April 2006.
S ...
.
Construction of Yamit began in January 1975. When the first fifty residents arrived there were no buildings, roads, electricity or water. Nevertheless, ambitious plans were drawn up for a port, a flour mill, a
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea ( he, יַם הַמֶּלַח, ''Yam hamMelaḥ''; ar, اَلْبَحْرُ الْمَيْتُ, ''Āl-Baḥrū l-Maytū''), also known by other names, is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank ...
Canal, a hotel and a university. A cornerstone was laid for a yeshiva. By the second year, the population reached 100.
Despite efforts to promote Yamit's relatively affordable housing, Yamit did not attract enough residents to make it a seaport. Upon the signing of the
peace treaty
A peace treaty is an agreement between two or more hostile parties, usually countries or governments, which formally ends a state of war between the parties. It is different from an armistice
An armistice is a formal agreement of warring ...
with Egypt in 1979, it became clear to residents that Yamit's days were numbered. Most accepted compensation and relocated to other cities. Those who chose to stay were joined by nationalist supporters who moved in to boost their numbers. When the order came to evacuate Yamit by force, many of the residents barricaded themselves inside their homes, while others climbed up to their roofs as soldiers broke down their doors.
Prior to the establishment of Yamit, the area south of Gaza known as the Rafah salient had been home to
Bedouin
The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and A ...
farmers who "tended almond, peach, olive, and castor-oil trees and patches of wheat. Near the coastline, where groundwater rose almost to the surface, they farmed a strip a few hundred meters wide that yielded richer crops. Herds of sheep and goats added to their livelihood. They were settled tribes; some lived in tents, but more in tin shacks and concrete houses'.
[Eyal Weizman,''Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation,'' Verso Books, 2012 p. 98.]
On January 14, 1972, without explicit instructions by the Israeli government,
Ariel Sharon ordered the expulsion of the Bedouins of the Rafah Plain, about of land in northeast Sinai, together with the razing of their orchards and the blocking of their water wells.
The tribal sheikhs claimed 20,000 people were affected by the expulsion. Israeli army statistics put the number of expelled at 4,950. Those with tents were given a day to remove them. Those in concrete houses were given an extra day to leave, and their homes were reduced to rubble. Bulldozers, following a map design drawn by Sharon, drove down a swathe extending several dozen metres wide where the Bedouins were encamped, and smashed everything in their way.
The decision to build Yamit was approved by the Israeli government in September 1973.
Settling northeastern Sinai was an idea strongly promoted by
Moshe Dayan
Moshe Dayan ( he, משה דיין; 20 May 1915 – 16 October 1981) was an Israeli military leader and politician. As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–1958) du ...
. The idea was subsequently proposed in a document on Israeli policy in the occupied territories written by
Yisrael Galili
Yisrael Galili ( he, ישראל גלילי; 10 February 1911 – 8 February 1986) was an Israeli politician, government minister and member of Knesset. Before Israel's independence in 1948, he served as Chief of Staff of the Haganah.
Biography
Y ...
, drafted to bridge the gap between hardliners and moderates in the Israeli Labour Party. According to one Israeli kibbutznik who visited the area immediately after the expulsion:
: "A group of members from kibbutzim in the region, including me, started to investigate. We went out and toured the area, and were stunned by the dimensions of the wreckage, and by the number of persons who were expelled. The
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; he, צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל , ), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym (), is the national military of the Israel, State of Israel. It consists of three servic ...
(IDF) and the government denied the facts that we presented, and claimed that they had merely evacuated a few nomads from state lands onto which the nomads had recently encroached."
The expulsion was not mentioned in the Israeli press. A month later, the head of the
International Committee of the Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
met and raised the issue with Dayan's viceroy in the territories,
Shlomo Gazit
Shlomo Gazit ( he, שלמה גזית; 22 October 1926 – 8 October 2020) was an Israeli military officer and academic. A Major General in the Israel Defense Forces, he headed Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate. He later served as Presid ...
, who knew nothing of it. The IDF chief of staff
David Elazar
David "Dado" Elazar ( he, דוד אלעזר; 27 August 1925 – 15 April 1976) was the ninth Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), serving in that capacity from 1972 to 1974. He was forced to resign in the aftermath of the Yom Kippu ...
, on being informed, flew over the area by helicopter to see for himself and subsequently appointed a commission to investigate what Ariel Sharon had done.
The subsequent inquiry revealed that the expulsion of the Bedouins had occurred under Dayan's personal initiative and without government authorization.
Golda Meir
Golda Meir, ; ar, جولدا مائير, Jūldā Māʾīr., group=nb (born Golda Mabovitch; 3 May 1898 – 8 December 1978) was an Israeli politician, teacher, and ''kibbutznikit'' who served as the fourth prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1 ...
's government implemented the pre-prepared plan for settlements on this Bedouin territory. According to one source, it was this official decision to establish a large Israeli city at Yamit which, for
Anwar Sadat
Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat, (25 December 1918 – 6 October 1981) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the third president of Egypt, from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 ...
and senior Egyptian officials, "was the straw that broke the camel's back", eventuating in the loss of hopes for a peace agreement and the onset of the
Yom Kippur War
The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from October 6 to 25, 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egy ...
.
Avi Shlaim
Avraham "Avi" Shlaim (born 31 October 1945) is an Israeli-British historian, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and fellow of the British Academy. He is one of Israel's New Historians, a group of Israeli ...
argues however that the Arab decision to go to war preceded the Galilee Document's publication. Nonetheless, Dayan made public remarks about his intention to build a deep-water port at Yamit, cutting Egypt off from the Gaza Strip and Sadat is on record as saying: "Every word spoken about Yamit is a knife pointing at me personally and at my self-respect."
Local kibbutzniks were outraged by the destruction and, on consultation with the tribal chief, Suleiman Hussein Uda Abu Hilo, arranged for a human rights lawyer to appeal on their behalf.
Some kibbutzniks, among them Oded Lifshitz, and Latif Dori, were also activists in the left-wing
Mapam
Mapam ( he, מַפָּ״ם, an acronym for , ) was a left-wing political party in Israel. The party is one of the ancestors of the modern-day Meretz party.
History
Mapam was formed by a January 1948 merger of the kibbutz-based Hashomer Hatz ...
party and ran ''Rafiah tours'' in order to show Israelis the destruction that had taken place, and to bring to public attention the fact that the image of the Bedouin as nomads was inexact, and that their orchards were being bulldozed. In July 1972, nine Bedouin sheikhs from the area petitioned the
Supreme Court of Israel
The Supreme Court (, ''Beit HaMishpat HaElyon''; ar, المحكمة العليا) is the Supreme court, highest court in Israel. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all other courts, and in some cases original jurisdiction.
The Supreme C ...
in order to obtain an order permitting them to return to their homes. Their case was presented by a Mapam man, Haim Holzman, who argued that the evacuation had no legal or military rationale, and violated the
Geneva Convention
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conven ...
. Ariel Sharon was ordered by the court to show cause for the expulsion. General
Israel Tal
Israel Tal ( he, ישראל טל, September 13, 1924, – September 8, 2010), also known as Talik (Hebrew: טליק), was an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general known for his knowledge of tank warfare and for leading the development of Israel's Mer ...
gave a deposition arguing that the Rafiah Plain area had been used by terrorists, who had attacked Israelis, as a shelter. A
buffer zone
A buffer zone is a neutral zonal area that lies between two or more bodies of land, usually pertaining to countries. Depending on the type of buffer zone, it may serve to separate regions or conjoin them.
Common types of buffer zones are demil ...
, involving "Jewish settlement and presence" between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, was required for security reasons. Holzmann replied, arguing that Tal's own maps showed terrorist attacks had been in decline, and the incidents enumerated lay outside the zone where the expulsion had taken place. Holzmann died of a heart attack before his summation, later given by his law partner, could be delivered. While the case was still pending, Dayan secretly asked Tel Aviv architects Yehuda Drexler and Ze'ev Drukman to draw up a blueprint for the projected port town of Yamit. The design brochure they produced was then sequestered by the IDF to ensure that the material would not come to the court's attention.
Dayan envisaged a metropolis whose population would be expanded to a quarter of a million people by the year 2000. His plan was shelved because its cost would have had serious consequences for Israel's poor. The first residents arrived in August 1975 and the population quickly expanded. Two settlement blocs surrounded it: to the east lay Pri'el, Talme Yosef, Netiv, Ha-Asara, Ugda, Nir Avraham, Prigan, Sadot, Diqua, and the block centre Avshalom, while south of Yamit, settlements were made at Atzmona, Tarsag and Ne'ot Sinai. Most of the population was composed of secular Israelis who were attracted to the pristine settings near the Mediterranean and the low cost of housing. The settlement was positioned about half a kilometer away from the shore, adjacent to Bedouins who lived nearby along the shoreline itself.
Evacuation
The evacuation of Yamit was part of the final stage of Israeli evacuation from Sinai. It was carried out in the face of powerful domestic opposition in Israel.
Moshe Arens
Moshe Arens (27 December 1925 – 7 January 2019) was an Israeli aeronautical engineer, researcher, diplomat and Likud politician. A member of the Knesset between 1973 and 1992 and again from 1999 until 2003, he served as Minister of Defense th ...
(of the Likud party), the head of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and professor
Yuval Ne'eman
Yuval Ne'eman ( he, יובל נאמן, 14 May 1925 – 26 April 2006) was an Israeli theoretical physicist, military scientist, and politician. He was Minister of Science and Development in the 1980s and early 1990s. He was the President o ...
, the leader of the right-wing
Tehiya
Tehiya ( he, תחיה, ''Revival''), originally known as Banai (Hebrew: , an acronym for ''Land of Israel Loyalists' Alliance'' (Hebrew: )), then Tehiya-Bnai (Hebrew: ), was an ultranationalist political party in Israel. The party existed from ...
party, led that opposition. They wanted to stop the evacuation and revoke the peace treaty with Egypt, arguing, that once Egypt had the entire Sinai, it would cancel the peace treaty with Israel and rejoin the rest of the Arab world.
Yamit was evacuated on April 23, 1982 amid resistance by some Yamit settlers and other supporters. Some residents barricaded themselves on the rooftops before being dragged into buses by Israeli soldiers. Political extremists from the rest of the country infiltrated Yamit to demonstrate their solidarity and sabotage the withdrawal. Among the more extreme examples of resistance were the disciples of Rabbi
Meir Kahane
Meir David HaKohen Kahane (; he, רבי מאיר דוד הכהן כהנא ; born Martin David Kahane; August 1, 1932 – November 5, 1990) was an American-born Israeli ordained Orthodox rabbi, writer, and ultra-nationalist politician who serve ...
, who vowed to take their own lives rather than surrender. After the personal intervention of Kahane, they agreed to leave.
The initial agreement between Israel and Egypt stipulated that Egypt would pay $80 million for the houses and infrastructure of Yamit. Ariel Sharon decided to destroy the settlement. Sharon claimed that he made the decision in response to an Egyptian request, but this was not the case. According to the Israeli ambassador to Egypt at the time, Moshe Sasson, Begin feared that the Israeli settlers would return to their homes surreptitiously and a disastrous clash between them and the Egyptians might occur. One suggestion was that Sharon deliberately made the whole process more traumatic than it needed to be, so that the Israeli public would refuse the dismantling of other settlements even for the sake of peace.
[Shlaim, pp. 399–400]
Since the demolition, the only structure that remains visible is a skeleton of the main synagogue, which contains no visible Jewish symbols.
References
{{Former Israeli settlements in the Sinai
Former Israeli settlements in Sinai
1967 establishments in the Israeli Military Governorate
1982 disestablishments in the Israeli Military Governorate