If it wasn’t before, it’s now official that the current Israeli government intends for there to be settlements in Gaza. During a ceremony marking the construction of 1,200 housing units in a West Bank settlement on Tuesday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that “when the time is right,” Israel will create what he described as “Nahal” settlements in north Gaza, reported Middle East Eye.
“We are deep inside Gaza and we will never leave all of Gaza—there will be no such thing,” Katz said. “We are here to protect and prevent what happened,” he added. According to MEE, Katz was referring to the 2005 evacuation of all Israeli settlements in Gaza, not the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack. He also stressed that Israeli troops remain inside Lebanon, Syria and the occupied West Bank, claiming that Israel was creating a barrier between “jihadist enemies and our communities and residents.”
The Nachala Settlement Movement said that there are currently over 1,000 families who are “ready to actually settle in Gaza,” adding that Israelis want “Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.”
Katz’s comments after the government announced on Monday plans for 11 new settlements in the West Bank. The government is also set to legalise and recognise eight outposts and neighbourhoods of existing settlements that were so far regarded as illegal under Israeli law, reported MEE.
The new settlements were approved by the security cabinet on 12 December and were proposed by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defence Minister Israel Katz. This brings the total number of approved settlements under Smotrich’s time in office since November 2022 to 69. Smotrich hailed the move as “a record like no other,” adding in an X post that the “people of Israel are returning to their land, building it and strengthening their hold on it.”
The head of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission and a minister in the Palestinian Authority (PA) Muayyad Shaban said the latest move constitutes “a war of extermination against Palestinian geography.” He urged international involvement to stop what he described as a “dangerous escalation,” which he said “reveals the true intentions of the occupation government to entrench the system of annexation, apartheid and the complete Judaization of Palestinian land.”
“The decision constitutes a blatant challenge to international law and Security Council resolutions, and sounds the alarm about the future of the West Bank, which is subjected to a systematic colonisation process aimed at uprooting the Palestinian presence and turning cities and villages into isolated and besieged enclaves.”
