Only 27 families, most of them secular, built this settlement in 1986 from the sand dunes. They grew organic vegetables and flowers, most of which were exported to Europe, and they defended their settlement, which much of the world regarded as illegal, against regular attacks from Palestinian militants, and at least once from some of their own workers.

Earlier Tuesday, Elei Sinai residents locked the main gate to the community and barricaded it with an old Subaru. They also burned several tires adjacent to the gate so that the settlement's children could burn old Ariel Sharon–Likud election posters.

"It's a small protest gesture," resident Sa'ar Berger told the Post.
Berger said that on Monday a SELA representative came to Elei Sinai and offered its residents permanent homes as far away as the Dead Sea. Berger said that this was not an option since the settlement did not want to split up, adding that a few of the settlers had businesses in the area and could not run them from the Dead Sea.

Chanting the now-familiar line, "Jews don't expel Jews," a group of approximately 200 activists succeeded Wednesday morning not just to evade IDF checkpoints throughout the south but also to stop traffic on the Kissufim Route, about two kilometers east of the Kissufim checkpoint.
In the opening struggle of a day promising to be full of such scenes, teams of four and five police officers succeeded in removing the protesters from the main avenue of traffic into Gush Katif and Kfar Darom, allowing empty buses and moving vans to continue their journey towards the Jewish settlements in the southern half of the Gaza Strip.