Israeli settlers look at Gaza return
Group trumpets idea as government yet to form a postwar plan
JERUSALEM — A group of Israelis hoping to live in the Gaza Strip at the war’s end has already published maps imagining Jewishmajority towns dotting the territory. Far-right Israeli lawmakers have drafted plans to make such settlements legal. And Israel’s national security minister has called for Arab residents to leave Gaza so that Jews can populate the coastal strip.
After four months of war and a death toll that officials in Gaza say exceeds 28,000, international pressure is mounting on Israel to withdraw from Gaza. But a small group of Israelis is pushing for the opposite: They want Israel to retain control of the territory, from which Hamas launched the deadliest attack in Israeli history, and reestablish the Jewish settlements that were dismantled in Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.
“The minute the war is over, we’ll build our homes there,” said Yair Cohen, 23, a reserve soldier whose family was evicted from Gaza in 2005. “The question isn’t whether we will return when the fighting is over, but if there will be a Gaza.”
To Palestinians, the settlers’ plans would most likely end in mass displacement and an end to their dream of a Palestinian state — a dream that much of the world would like to see realized.
“Israel wants the Palestinian people to choose between destruction and displacement,” the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told the body last month.
But unlikely as resettlement seems to outsiders, the idea is being promoted at a time when Israel has yet to decide how postwar Gaza should be governed.
Although the U.S. and other powers are pushing for Gaza to form part of a Palestinian state, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has other priorities, including staying in power and placating his farright coalition partners.
In the absence of a government plan for after the war, talk of settlement is filling the vacuum and
alarming Israel’s allies.
The movement to settle Gaza is driven by nationalist fervor, religious zeal and security concerns since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led fighters stormed the Israel border from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage.
The war provides what the settlers see as an opportunity. For nearly two decades, settlers and their supporters have viewed the 2005 withdrawal as a setback.
Israel’s prime minister and defense minister have ruled out resettlement, and the idea lacks support from most of the Israeli public. A Hebrew University poll in December found that 56%
of Israelis oppose resettling Gaza. But a vocal minority is trying to build momentum behind their project, and they are supported by one-third of the lawmakers in Israel’s far-right coalition.
The settlers’ vision of Israelis returning to Gaza would mean replacing the Palestinians living there. The settler movement is divided on how to do that, but some extremist settlers advocate deportation.
At a recent settler conference in Jerusalem, which was attended by 3,500 people, including some farright ministers, one group held up “Only transfer will bring peace” signs.
As he addressed the meeting, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s
far-right national security minister, saw the posters and told the group: “You are right.” Then, of the Palestinians in Gaza, he said: “They should go away from here.”
Some attendees shouted: “Only eviction!”
The settler movement has a long history and powerful supporters, including Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister. Both men wield outsize influence because their small parties are critical to keeping Netanyahu’s coalition in power.
The Israeli government began building settlements after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt.
Most countries consider the settlements illegal and regard them as an obstacle to the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. Israel withdrew from Gaza, but more than 200 settlements house a half-million Israelis in the occupied West Bank.
Beyond far-right politicians, the movement includes Israelis who lived in Gaza settlements before 2005 and religious hardliners from West Bank settlements. A keynote speaker at rallies, Uzi Sharbav, was convicted of taking part in the murder of three Palestinians in the 1980s. Although sentenced to decades in prison, he was pardoned in 1990.
Some settlers view living in Gaza through a religious prism, seeking to inhabit the land of their ancestors in fulfillment of what they believe was a promise made by God in biblical times. Others say settlements are essential for Israel’s security, arguing that a civilian presence among Palestinians makes it more difficult for combatants to organize attacks.
Many Israelis disagree. “The settlements there were a security risk,” said Omer Zanany, security expert at a foreign policy research group, the Mitvim Institute. “Israeli military forces had to escort children to kindergartens and schools.”