Zionist settlers want to return to Gaza after war
JERUSALEM: “A house on the beach is not a dream!” The advertising slogan by a Zionist settlement developer is music to the ears of former Gaza settlers yearning to return to the Palestinian territory after the war. Nearly two decades after Zionist settlers pulled out of Gaza, the real estate developer Harey Zahav sparked controversy when it posted the slogan on social media in mid-December as the Zionist entity wages a military offensive against the territory’s Hamas rulers.
“This campaign expresses a desire to return (to Gaza) but we have no projects in development,” said Zeev Epstein, the owner of the company, which is notorious for constructing wildcat settler outposts in the occupied West Bank without Zionist government authorization. All settlements on occupied Palestinian land are regarded as illegal under international law, regardless of whether they were approved by the Zionist entity. Epstein made the comment to Zionist Channel 13 television as pro-Palestine supporters expressed outrage over what they saw as a proposal to build beachfront homes over the bombedout ruins of Gaza.
The Zionist entity unilaterally withdrew the last of its troops and 8,000 settlers on Sept 11, 2005, ending its presence in Gaza, which began in 1967, but maintaining near complete control over the territory’s borders.
Despite its withdrawal, the Zionist entity imposed a land, sea and air blockade on the territory and is still regarded internationally as an occupying power in the Gaza Strip.
Far-right Zionist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich this week called for the return of Jewish settlers to the Gaza Strip after the war and said its Palestinian population should be encouraged to emigrate. Coalition lawmaker Zvika Foghel told public radio last month that the entity must “take control over the territory north of the Gaza River and establish new Jewish settlement”.
For Hannah Picard, a 66-year-old French-Zionist who lived for 16 years in the heart of the Gaza Strip, “it’s obvious that we are going to go back”. The ongoing war in Gaza, she said, was a prelude to her return. “Deep down, we dream of going back, because it’s our home,” Picard said in an interview in her three-bedroom apartment in Jerusalem, which she described as her “temporary home”. Her former seaside home in central Gaza, she said, was akin to “living in paradise”.
Oded Mizrahi, who works at Jerusalem’s Gush Katif Museum — named after a bloc of Zionist settlements in the Gaza Strip — was convinced that returning to the territory would soon be possible. “We don’t know exactly how but ... everyone understands that Hamas cannot stay there,” he told AFP. “We have no other choice but to govern” Gaza, he said. — AFP