Jewish settlers set their sights along Gaza’s coast

Who wouldn’t want to build a house on the beach? For some in Israel’s far right, desirable coastlines now include the beaches of Gaza.

If you ask Daniela Weiss, 78, the grandmother of Israel’s settler movement, she says she already has a list of 500 families ready to move to Gaza at a moment’s notice.

“I have friends in Tel Aviv, and they say, ‘Don’t forget to set aside some land for me near the coast of Gaza.’ It’s a beautiful, beautiful coast, beautiful golden sand. That’s why,” she says.

She said land along the coast has already been reserved.

Mrs. Weiss leads a radical settler organization called Nachala (Homeland). For decades, she has set up Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, on Palestinian land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Some members of the settler movement say they have not returned to Gaza since 2005, when Israel ordered a unilateral withdrawal, with 21 settlements dismantled and about 9,000 settlers evacuated by the military. Some people have cherished dreams or fantasies. (Reporting from Gaza at the time, I saw many people literally being dragged out.)

Many colonists viewed all of this as a betrayal by the state and a strategic mistake.

Opinion polls show that most Israelis oppose resettlement in Gaza, and while this is not government policy, since the October 7 Hamas attack, the most vocal and most extreme members of the Israeli government have Some voices are talking about this loudly.

Mrs. Weiss proudly showed me a map of the West Bank with pink dots marking Jewish settlements. Dots are scattered across the map, encroaching on land where Palestinians hope or hope to build a state.

There are currently approximately 700,000 Jewish settlers in these areas, and the number of settlers is rapidly increasing.

The majority of the international community, including the United Nations Security Council, considers the settlements to be illegal under international law. Israel disputes this.

We met Daniela at her home in the West Bank village of Kedumim. There, red-roofed houses are spread out on hills and in valleys. Even though she has a bandaid on her arm, she is constantly moving.

Her vision for the future of Gaza, which is currently home to 2.3 million Palestinians, many of them starving, is for it to become Jewish.

“Arabs in Gaza will not stay in the Gaza Strip,” she says. “Who’s left? The Jews.”

She says Palestinians want to leave Gaza and that other countries should take them in, but she rarely uses the word “Palestinian” in long interviews.

“The world is a big place,” she says. “Africa is big. Canada is big. The world will absorb the people of Gaza. How will we do it? We will encourage it. The Palestinians of Gaza, the good people, will be able to do it. I I’m not saying it’s forced, I’m saying it’s possible because “they want to go.” ”

Although there is no evidence that Palestinians want to leave their homeland, many may now dream of temporarily fleeing to save their lives. For most Palestinians, there is no way out. The border is tightly controlled by Israel and Egypt, and no foreign country has offered refuge.

I told her that her comments sounded like an ethnic cleansing plot. she doesn’t deny it.

“You can call this ethnic cleansing. Again, we don’t want Arabs, we don’t want ordinary Arabs living in Gaza. If you want to call this cleansing, if you want to call it apartheid, The definition is up to you. Choose the path that protects the state of Israel.”

A few days later, Daniela Weiss is pitching the idea of ​​returning to Gaza over cake and popcorn at a small gathering hosted by another settler in her living room.

She has a projector showing a new map of Gaza with settlements listed and a flyer titled “Return to Gaza.”

“People ask me, what are the chances of this happening?” she says.

“Back then, what were the odds that I would come to these dark mountains and reach this heaven?”

A handful of those in attendance already seem convinced. “I want to go back soon,” says Sara Manera. “When I get the call, I’ll go back to Gash Katif.” [the former Israeli settlement bloc in Gaza]. ”

What will happen to the people living there, we ask?

“That area is empty now,” she replied. “Now you don’t have to think about where to put your settlement money, you can just come back and put a new settlement money.”

Although the Gaza Strip is by no means uninhabited, much of it has been wiped out by Israel’s relentless shelling for nearly six months.

In the words of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, it is “the world’s largest open-air cemetery.”

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The World Health Organization considers the ministry’s data reliable.

For some Israeli ministers, the now blood-soaked Palestinian territories are ripe for resettlement. Among them is Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is himself a settler.

In late January, he made his way through a packed conference room, slowing down with hugs and handshakes. He was among about 1,000 ultranationalist friends advocating for a return to Gaza at an event titled “Settlement Brings Security.”

Pro-immigration advocate Ben Gvir was among more than a dozen ministers in attendance.

“It’s time to go home,” he said from the stage, to loud applause. “It’s time to return to the land of Israel. If we don’t want to see another October 7th, we need to return to our homeland and rule this land.”

In the shade of a vast tree, Yehuda Shimon plays with his two young sons, who hang from the branches in a hammock.

He has raised 10 children in a West Bank settler outpost called Havat Gilad (Gilad Farm) near the Palestinian city of Nablus.

Around him are Palestinian villages, the closest one is 500 meters away. There was no contact between them, he says.

Shimon has lived in Gaza in the past and claims his God-given right to return.

“We have to do it. This is part of the Israeli region,” he says. “This is the land that God gave us, so we can’t go to God and say, ‘Okay, you gave it to me, and I gave it to others.’ . No, I believe they will eventually return to Gaza.”

I ask what this means for Palestinians.

“There are 52 other places in the world to go to,” he says, “52 Muslim countries.” The new Gaza will be “another Tel Aviv,” he says.

Outposts like his are proliferating along with large settlements in the West Bank, dividing the Palestinian territory and escalating tensions.

Attacks on Palestinians by settlers have spiked since October 7, according to the United Nations, which has long denounced settlements as an “obstacle to peace.”

And now settler organizations are turning their attention to Gaza again.

Are there any real prospects for settlers to reach the Gaza coast?

A veteran Israeli journalist told me that would never happen. “Calls for resettlement in Gaza are not reflected in policy,” he said.

He then added, “Famous last words.”

Additional reporting by Wietske Burema, Goktay Koraltan and Ariel Tagar