By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif. -- One of Israel’s best-known veterinarians—Dr. Yoni Peres—says he hopes that Israel’s government has learned from the Gaza disengagement that contingency plans in any future evacuations must provide not only for people, but also for animals.

Peres, who operates the 24-Hour Emergency Veterinary Center in Hakfar Hayrok, north of Tel Aviv, said hundreds of animals were abandoned by settlers who were forced to leave the Gaza Strip last August.  Some of the animals died before such groups as AHAVA (a Hebrew acronym for "Heart for Animals"), Let the Animals Live, and others mounted rescue operations last summer in the waning days of Israel’s occupation of Gaza.

The veterinarian, who previously had taught medicine at Hebrew University’s veterinary school and had directed veterinary operations for Israel’s Guide Dog Center for the Blind, said the Israeli government did not anticipate that many settlers would simply leave behind their dogs, cats, and other animals.

Once the situation became apparent, Israel’s governmental bureaucracy was too slow in responding to the requests of various animal protection organizations for permission to conduct rescue operations, Peres said.  In some cases, it took up to a week for permission to be granted, he said.

In a Feb. 18 interview during a private visit to San Diego,  Peres said Israel’s government must make contingency plans for the relocation of animals if and when it decides to withdraw from West Bank portions of the Palestinian territories.




Israeli veterinarian Yoni Peres meets "Mootzi," on a visit to San Diego

Peres has more access than most Israelis to the highest level of government decision making as his father is former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who is expected to hold a high position in any government that is formed following Israel’s March 28 elections

The veterinarian said many of his countrymen were distraught to learn that some dogs were left chained up by their owners without any food or water, while other animals were simply left to forage on their own in the Gaza settlements.

He said he could not provide an explanation why many settlers seemed to have such disregard for the welfare of their animals, but said the problem of animal abandonment was not restricted to the settlers alone.

Israel has a large problem with feral cats, he said, and near the Ben-Gurion International Airport packs of dogs run wild—their owners simply dropping them out of the car before getting on a plane before going abroad. 

The phenomenon of animal abandonment was also seen during the First Gulf War in 1991 when people who were afraid of the Scud missiles fired by Iraq left their apartments to live in other parts of the country.  In some instances, he said, the people either left their pets behind or dropped them off somewhere.

In the case of the Gaza settlers, Peres said, some of the dogs left behind had been used as guard dogs, and perhaps the hotels to which the settlers were being transferred were unsuited to the outdoor dogs.  Most of the dogs, however, simply had been pets.  There were also pet ducks and other fowl, and even donkeys that were left behind. 

The rescue operations involved going through each of the Gaza settlements in searches for animals to be brought back to Israel.  By the time the agencies got  there, hundreds of animals either had died, or disappeared. But hundreds more were brought back to Israel, where they were placed in shelters, adopted, or sent to veterinary facilities for treatment.

In one case that drew national television coverage, a 13-year-old boy was heartbroken after he became separated from his pet goat.  An officer of the Israel Defense Forces helped the youth recover “Dizzy”  and arranged for its transport to Israel where boy and goat are now reunited.

Rescue groups brought to Peres’ veterinary hospital a cat with leukemia, which could not be saved, and a dog of mixed breed  that had been left in Gaza “tied to a short chain.,” Peres related.  The dog “didn’t drink for three or four days, and he was in very bad condition. He had parasites, his skin was full of patches. Later on  he suffered from a condition called ‘gastric dilation and volvulus’—in which the stomach turns on its axis. We had to operate on that, and we saved him.”

Subsequent to the operation, Peres discussed the case on Israel television’s  “Club 50-Plus” talk show hosted by Galia Albin, and “within a half hour the dog was adopted.”