Here and there: The Phenomenology of Settlement Removal from Northern Sinai

In discussing the removal of Israeli settlers from Sinai before its return to Egypt this article examines the sense of place with respect to a general perspective and the Israeli context. The author examines loss of place, placelessness, and rootlessness, humiliation, distress, and alienation; losing one's past, present, and future sense of place; attaining a sense of place; and continuity and change in the sense of place. Sixty families of evacuees were interviewed, with interviews held in 1980 and 1982 before the evacuation, and interviews with more than one-third of the subjects held in 1984, nearly two years after evacuation. The author concludes that the Sinai settlershad created a world with a vivid spirit of place, which some tried to replicate in their new communities with only partial success. The major obstacle to the continuity of a sense of place is hypothesized to be failure in the economic domain.