The government, which continues to assure its international allies that the young settlers theoretically remained in Israeli territory, will not return Israeli citizens to Gaza. But for the settlers, it offers an opportunity to repair the trauma of the October 7 2005 disengagement, and instead crown a policy of appropriation of state institutions and Israeli civil society. On January 28, several thousand of them had already gathered in Jerusalem to extol the merits and demands of Gaza's ethnic cleansing. A third of the government ministers and a quarter of the Knesset representatives attended the stage in the International Convention Center Hall.
500 families are ready to go
The February 29 release was neither accidental nor improvised. It was carefully arranged the day before in the comfortable and somewhat dated living room of Daniela Weiss, a resident of the Ketoumim colony near Nablus (West Bank). At 78, the settlement association's co-chairman Nachala (Hebrew for “inheritance,” a word closely linked to land in the Zionist imagination) is one of the leading figures in the settlement movement.
In the West Bank, illegal settlements have been on the rise since the war between Israel and Hamas
His association manages seven “Cores” namely “About 500 families are ready to go to Gaza tomorrow” tells us Daniela Weiss, for whom decolonization is not only inevitable but right. “I see Arabs crawling in tunnels like rats: ordinary people don't choose to live like that” she said evenly. “They took heaven and made it hell; They lost their right to stay there”.
Obstacles with no effect
Sera Lisson was one of these 500 families from the beginning. Gush Katif, a former Israeli colony in Gaza, where he spent his youth. It was there that she met her husband, Israel. Today, the couple and their six children live in a prefab in the Rehelim colony, not far from Kedomim, and their suitcases are always ready. “Anytime, I get a message saying to go and set up a village somewhere” explains the young woman with big, excited blue eyes.
Western sanctions against violent immigrants do not seem to have had much of an impact. Attacks against the most remote Palestinian villages continue, and authorized settlements are still expanding: in February, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in Kédoumim, announced the construction of 3,300 new homes there.
Massacre during aid delivery: “All this shows the desire to destroy part of the Palestinian population of Gaza”
In 1975, Kédoumim had a few mobile homes. Today, the settlement has 5,000 residents in thirteen neighborhoods, built on 50 hectares of Palestinian land. “Let's say we won” declares Daniela Weiss without courage. “The right-wing governments of the last twenty years, the supporters of the colonies, prove this. No one questioned that today”. The statistics prove him right: Ten days ago, 99 out of 120 representatives in the Knesset rejected the idea of a Palestinian state, which would not be created with Israel's approval.
This is just the beginning
Like many settlements, Rehelim was built against an Arab village to disrupt the lives and development of Palestinians. After October 7, when the men went to the front, the women armed themselves. But Serah Lisson wouldn't give up this Wild West life for anything in the world. She lives up to her status as a besieged state. A weak Palestinian armed struggle sometimes gives them reason to fear. On Thursday, a Palestinian police officer killed two settlers at a gas station a few kilometers from Rehelim.
In Gaza, as in the West Bank, this is only the beginning, he assures. “When we Jews say 'from the river to the sea', we mean the EuphratesSera smiled. Her son Elijah, 15, brings his little brother and sister before heading out to visit friends in another colony. The Lisson children are polite, helpful, independent and intelligent, far from the image of the turbulent and lost teenager, clinging to fanatical sectarianism like a buoy. “Our greatest victory is our youthDaniela Weiss asserts,Because they stay. They don't go to Tel Aviv or abroad”. They too are ready to wage the perpetual war their parents' oath promised them.
“Total coffee junkie. Tv ninja. Unapologetic problem solver. Beer expert.”