Monday, August 22 2005 10:21 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Jerusalem: Expelled from a Gaza Strip settlement by Israeli forces, Indian immigrants waited in 'congested' hotel rooms to be shifted to houses which the Government promised to provide them within 10 days while saying that the future looked 'uncertain' to them.

"You can live in a shack or a small tenement, no matter what, but there is hope. Here the future in this congested hotel room looks uncertain. The Government has not lived upto its promises and it is difficult to trust them," Avin Gangte, seen as the leader of the Indian Bnei Menashe community that lived in the Neveh Dekalim settlement, told PTI.

The community hailing from the North-Eastern states of Manipur and Mizoram, referred to as Bnei Menashe (literally sons of Menashe), formed the single-largest immigrant community in the Gaza Strip.

"We were promised a big room and two small rooms at the hotel but we got less. Everybody feels that the Government has gone back on its words. Now when they say that they will provide us homes in ten days, all we are trying to do is to keep calm and see what's coming. We don't believe them," Gangte said.

The community, which shunned any violent means to resist evacuation, has been put up at two hotels here, Jerusalem Gate hotel and Hyatt, and another hotel in Ashkelon in the south of the country.