EVICTED from hotels, shunted into tent cities and standing forlornly on street corners shouting at passing cars, settlers from Gaza have become Israel’s wandering Jews.

Evoking sympathy and disapproval in equal measure from ordinary Israelis, the 9,000 evacuated settlers are still in shock, gradually absorbing the reality that waking up under canvas is their new life, not a summer camp.

They are entitled to generous compensation but fewer than half have received any, and those who defied the deadline to leave last week will forfeit one third.

The 800 settlers of Atzmona, who have insisted on staying together, are putting up a tent-and-caravan “city of faith” on an industrial estate in Netivot until they find somewhere more permanent. In the windless oven of a partially built warehouse, the settlement’s advance party has erected tarpaulins and marquees, where children seek out the water-coolers while their parents commandeer side rooms for a synagogue and kindergarten. Dudi Raich, a community leader, said: “My life is in two cars now, one for moving around and the other with my things inside.”

Of Gaza’s 1,700 families, about 1,000 are living in hotels across Jerusalem, Netanya, Beer Sheva and other towns, 150 are in a temporary camp at Nitzan and 100 in rented apartments. More than 400 have found their own solutions, including the settlers of Netzarim, who moved en masse to student dormitories in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

Sela, the government body that is in charge of organising accommodation for the settlers, aims to move the 1,000 families who are in hotels within ten days, mostly into yet more temporary housing.

Evacuees from Netzer Hazani have also moved from place to place. After a night of protesting at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, they moved to an hotel in the occupied Golan Heights but left after one night when it became fully booked.

Anita Toker said: “We’re like nomads. We don’t have a park bench to sleep on.”

A spokesman for the PLO said the idea that settlers were refugees “implies that they were legally there in the first place, and they were not”.

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