Expelled from a Gaza Strip settlement by Israeli forces, Indian immigrants waited in "congested" hotel rooms to be shifted to houses, which the government promised to provide them within 10 days while saying that the future looked "uncertain" to them.
"You can live in a shack or a small tenement, no matter what, but there is hope. Here the future in this congested hotel room looks uncertain. The government has not lived upto its promises and it is difficult to trust them," Avin Gangte, seen as the leader of the Indian Bnei Menashe community that lived in the Neveh Dekalim settlement, told PTI.
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The community hailing from the northeastern states of Manipur and Mizoram, referred to as Bnei Menashe (literally sons of Menashe), formed the single-largest immigrant community in the Gaza Strip.
"We were promised a big room and two small rooms at the hotel but we got less. Everybody feels that the government has gone back on its words. Now when they say that they will provide us homes in ten days, all we are trying to do is to keep calm and see what's coming. We don't believe them," Gangte said.
The community, which shunned any violent means to resist evacuation, has been put up at two hotels here -- Jerusalem Gate hotel and Hyatt, and another hotel in Ashkelon in the south of the country.
Asked about the compensation to be paid to the settlers and promises by the administration not to cut down the package for those not resorting to violence, a young member of the community said, "in matters like this, they are 'chalak' (cunning)".
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"We are as curious to see what will happen to us as everyone else. We might be moved to rented apartments but we will struggle to be kept together and for a reasonable solution for each one of us," he said, asking not to be named.
The settlers, however, will have another chance to visit their homes in Gaza to finish packing their stuff and dismantle their equipment.
"The administration has to decide when that happens. Probably next week, but we have expensive computers for water irrigation and we just left the Strip with small bags. We have to dismantle the equipment and pack our things in the container which lies in front of our houses. It is just a part of the evacuation process," Gangte said.
It is likely that the evacuees will be taken to collect their stuff in small groups to avoid any altercation.
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