Elei Sinai

Elei Sinai (Hebrew: אֱלֵי סִינַי, lit. Towards Sinai) was an Israeli settlement in the north of the Gaza Strip.

Founding

Elei Sinai was established in 1982 (Sukkot 5743) by a group who had been evicted from Yamit in the Sinai Peninsula. It was named for the yearning to return to the Sinai desert, where Yamit was located.

Avi Farhan, a Yamit expellee, and Arik Herfez, whose daughter had been killed by Palestinian militants, were two of the most notable residents.

Unilateral Disengagement

Among the arguments in opposition to Israel's unilateral disengagement plan, which stated that the settlers should be evicted from Elei Sinai, was a proposal by Farhan allowing the settlers to remain in their homes as Palestinian citizens, an idea the Palestinians the Israeli government rejected.

The residents had actually left their homes voluntarily but returned after realizing that the government had no place to send them.

On 21 August 2005, the approximately 100 families living in the village, were surrendered by IDF forces, and were forcefully evicted before the village was demolished. After the eviction, a group of fifty families established themselves at the Yad Mordechai junction as a protest that the government hadn't found a community solution for them. Others were sent to the Shirat HaYam hotel. The rest of the settlement later split into a few groups, including those now found in: