In the ruins of the Palm Beach Hotel you get a powerful sense that an era is drawing to a close that Israel’s attempt to settle

In the ruins of the Palm Beach Hotel you get a powerful sense that an era is drawing to a close that Israel’s attempt to settle its people on the Gaza Strip is in its last days.
    The waves still crash on the fine sand in front of the beach hotel. But since the Palestinians launched their uprising against Israel—the intifada—nearly five years ago, Gaza has become a violent, dangerous place. People don’t come on holiday anymore. The Palm Beach resort complex was abandoned by its staff and management. The reception area and the dining room have been stripped of their fixtures and fittings. The wind off the sea blows in across floors strewn with broken glass.
    A similar fate awaits everything that Israel has built here—if it withdraws from Gaza in August, as planned.
    Some young settlers have been squatting in the hotel as it’s decayed around them. For Elazaar Elchiam, life is good. He lives for nothing in one of the resort’s beachfront apartments. The Mediterranean waves are just metres away, and Elazaar has a passion for surfing.
    He grew up in one of the nearby settlements—where red-roofed bungalows surrounded by lawns bake in the summer sun. Elazaar dreads the thought that this may well be his last summer on Gaza’s beach.
    The settlers say Israel is making a mistake. That it’s handing victory to the Palestinian militants who have been attacking Gush Katif for years. Israel has a horror of the possibility that the settler’s homes will be treated as the spoils of victory by groups like the Hamas organisation. To prevent that, it’s possible that the army will demolish everything in the days before the Israelis leave.
    Debbie Rosen, a mother who’s raised six children in Gush Katif, said she hates the thought of her home being destroyed. But at the same time she couldn’t bear the idea of what she called "terrorists who killed her friends" taking over the house as they celebrate Israel’s retreat.
    Since the Israeli army captured Gaza nearly forty years ago—in the Six Day War—it’s been occupied territory. When it moved civilian settlers into the Strip it was breaching the Geneva Conventions—the international rules of war.
    This means nothing to settlers like Debbie Rosen. She said she never thought of her home as being in occupied territory. For her, Gaza is part of the land that God promised the Jews.
    The occupation may mean nothing to the settlers of Gush Katif—but it means everything just a short distance away, in the Palestinian town of Khan Younis, for decades. For Palestinian families, the occupation has restrictions on movements and limits and humiliations in many areas of life—and it’s hated.
    Along the western side of Khan Younis Israeli troops man watchtowers that are part of the defenses for the settlements. And the area has seen many clashes between the army and Palestinian militants. They frequently launch rocket and other attacks on the settler communities that they see as being so symbolic of the Israeli presence.
    The beach used to be an escape from the heat and squalor of the alleyways of Khan Younis. But to keep the militants out of the settlement zone, the army has blocked the Palestinian road to the sea. Khan Younis has lost its beach.