Professional behavior during conditions of extreme community turmoil: the case of the removal of settlements from Sinai

Article Abstract:

This article reports an informal study of six human services professionaLs who conducted research and practice in Israeli settlements in Sinai during the settlements' evacuation, which was required by the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The author presents a model of three strategies of professional behavior that can guide human service professionals and social researchers during instances of extreme community turmoil: (1) disregarding the crisis and following one's usual professional routines, (2) relinquishing one's professional stance and becoming personally immersed in the catastrophe, or (3) modifying one's behavior to suit the abnormal conditions. From retrospective interviews with the professionals, the author finds that the practitioners chose the first strategy and the researchers the third. Professional, situational, and personal circumstances for these choices are analyzed, and the author recommends further elaboration of the model and an assessment of the comparative productivity of alternative strategies. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Social workers, Social science research

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The disbandment of a community: a psychiatric action research project

Article Abstract:

This article discusses individual and communal responses to the stress an Israeli cooperative agricultural settlement in Sinai underwent as it faced disbandment required by the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The authors belonged to a team of five mental health professionals who studied 40 families, beginning more than a year before the evacuation to shortly thereafter. Using both direct observation and interviews, the team studied sources of and responses to stress. They found the main stressors to be acute changes in the settlers' expectations, roles, and identities, and responses to be both adaptive and nonadaptive. The authors report that although most of the settlers coped with the evacuation well, they generally suffered damage to their abilities to sustain communal relationships, which may have lasting effects. The article presents preventive measures that may have aided these evacuees and could prove useful for others who are to be uprooted in the future. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

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Facing the threat of removal: lessons from the forced evacuation of Ofira

Article Abstract:

This article discusses the evacuation of Ofira, an Israeli settlement in Sinai, as a condition of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The authors were members of a group of mental health specialists brought in shortly before the withdrawal to act as consultants and therapists. They describe the dynamics of the community and its inhabitants, different reactions to the withdrawal, and avenues for addressing the evacuees' psychological plights. Although the authors find they did not have sufficient time to do all they wished to help the Ofirans, their experience has led them to suggest guidelines for assisting other groups undergoing forced removal from their homes. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

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