#1 Press release from Prime Minister's Office
[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: IMRA asked the Prime Minister's Office what the
meaning of "75% of the evacuee labor force has re-entered the work cycle"
means. IMRA was advised that this means that 75% of those employed prior to
disengagement are now employed. This figure is dramatically different from
other reports.]

------------------------
PM Olmert Convenes Ministerial Disengagement Committee
(Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today (Monday), 8.1.07, convened the Ministerial
Disengagement Committee.

The SELA Disengagement Authority and various Government ministries updated
the Committee on the acclimatization of the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria
evacuees and on the problems that have yet to be resolved. It was reported
that 75% of the evacuee labor force has re-entered the work cycle. It is
expected that 85% will have done so by mid-2007..."
..................

#2 Reality

A year and a half later: Nearly half of Gaza evacuees are without work,
illness is up, and the money ran out long ago
By Nadav Shragai Haaretz Last Update: 15/01/2007 15:23
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=katif&itemNo=813366

Yitzhak Tzaig has looked for work at more than 50 places, but the interview
with the manager of the Ace hardware store in Ashkelon was particularly
difficult. At the door, the manager shouted to him, "Hey, how old are you?"
Tzaig, 56, called up the dregs of his sense of humor to respond, "not
including nights I slept, 28."

"I was a successful farmer at Ganei Tal for 22 years," he told the manager.
"I finished a marketing course held by Sela [an acronym for the government's
disengagement administration]; I have experience selling furniture," he
said. He was even willing to work for free for a trial period. But the
manager, who apparently paid more attention to Tzaig's age than to anything
else, refused.

Tzaig has six children, and the family is living on the monthly salary of
NIS 4,000 his wife earns as the secretary of an Orthodox girls high school,
which moved from Neveh Dekalim in Gush Katif to Givat Washington, near
Ashdod. Like other evacuees, the Tzaigs, who are currently living with their
community of Gannei Tal at Yad Binyamin, are drawing on their compensation
money, which was to have been used to build them a new house, to make ends
meet.

Shimon Sokal, 52, a resident of Neveh Dekalim for 19 years and the owner of
a carpentry shop there, is more fortunate. His new carpentry shop, which he
runs with a partner, was built for him in the moshav where he grew up,
Masuot Yitzhak. But until he got started, he used up half his compensation
money. His chances of building his permanent home at Nitzan, the largest of
the evacuee communities, are no longer what they were.

According to the committee of Gush Katif settlers, 49 percent of the working
people of the Gush (1.460 people) are still unemployed. Only 150 of the 700
business owners (21.4 percent) have reopened their businesses. Their
eligibility for acclimation allowances and unemployment benefits ran out
long ago - and according to the Evacuation-Compensation Law, business owners
were not even eligible for those payments. The committee says more than 500
families are in economic trouble and receiving food packages from welfare
organizations.

Dana Zelinger, a 42-year-old mother of seven, managed a stationery store in
the commercial center at Neveh Dekalim. Currently unemployed, and living
with her family in Kibbutz Ein Tzurim, Zelinger is studying in a project
management course sponsored by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor,
being held in Kiryat Malachi. Her husband, Tzvi, is an electrician whose
income has taken a nosedive since the withdrawal. The family is also dipping
into its compensation money, "just to survive," Dana Zelinger says.

Making a living is not the only difficulty facing the evacuees. Zelinger
says outright what many others are unwilling to acknowledge: "Illness among
the evacuees is much higher than in the general population. My situation and
that of my friends also impacts on the family. More couples are getting
divorced. Seeing their parents sitting idle is very hard on the children,"
she says.

Evacuee health problems

At first, illness among the evacuees was just something of a rumor within
the community. About two months ago, though, the sense that something was
amiss with the health of previously well people was backed up by a study
undertaken by the district office of the Health Ministry with Barzilai
Hospital in Ashkelon.

Data from the Neveh Dekalim clinic, collected a year before disengagement,
was compared with that from the clinic in Nitzan, from a year after the
pullout. Cases of high blood pressure had almost doubled, as had the number
of heart episodes. Diabetes was also on the rise - with 1.29 percent of the
group suffering from it before the pullout, compared with 1.79 percent two
years later. The number of asthma attacks were up by 50 percent and the rate
of cancerous tumors had increased from 0.61 percent to 1.08 percent.

Dr. Alon Karni, of the Clalit health maintenance organization in Nitzan,
says many of the illnesses are stress-related. The most famous patient among
the Gush Katif evacuees is the former head of the Gaza Coast Regional
Council, Avner Shimoni, who had a stroke a few months ago.

Disputed numbers of unemployed

Everyone agrees that the key to the rehabilitation of the evacuees is a
return to work. The Employment Service says there are about 4,000 employable
evacuees. Of this number, 783 have stopped looking for work for various
reasons: Amomg them, 183 have retired, 87 women became housewives, 98 began
studying in yeshiva, and 67 fell ill. There are still 820 people looking for
work; and 2,257 have found new jobs.

These numbers show that unemployment among Gush evacuees is 25 percent
higher than the national average. But the committee of Gush Katif evacuees
says the numbers are much higher still. The labor force is 3,000, not close
to 4,000, they say, and almost half of that number want to work but are not.

The numbers compiled by Ta'asukatif, a voluntary association established by
Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Rimon of Alon Shvut, are similar, showing about 1,300
people out of a job. The organization has so far raised about $400,000 from
communities in the U.S., which has assisted about 500 people find work. The
state did allocate $20,000 to help establish small businesses, but it only
gives the money to businesses in national priority areas A and B, where few
former Gush Katif residents have relocated.

Rimon estimates that 350 of the 1,300 job-seekers have not found work
because of their age and because they are unable to reestablish themselves
as farmers. He has proposed that the state create voluntary positions that
would be paid by stipends, "just so these people will get out of their house
in the morning and be busy at something for a few hours."

Yitzhak Tzaig, who has not yet given up hope of finding work, says that
despite the obvious differences, he feels like he is in the movie "The 81st
Blow," about a Holocaust survivor who comes to Israel, where everyone
ignores his story. "I already took the blows. My 81st blow is the people who
don't believe I really want to work," he says.