Israel-Hamas conflict: Jewish settlers planning their settlements on the edge of Gaza

Who wouldn’t want to have a house on the beach? For some on Israel’s far right, coveted seaside property now includes the sands of Gaza.

Just ask Daniella Weiss, 78, the “grandmother” of Israel’s settler movement, who says she already has a list of 500 families ready to move to Gaza immediately.

“I have friends in Tel Aviv,” she says, “They say, ‘Don’t forget to book me some land near the coast in Gaza,’ because it’s a beautiful coast, with beautiful golden sands.”

She tells them that the land on the coast is already reserved.

Weiss leads an organization of radical settlers called Nachala, or “homeland.” For decades, she has been at the forefront of creating Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, on Palestinian land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Some in the settler movement have harbored the dream – or daydream – of returning to Gaza since 2005, when Israel ordered a unilateral withdrawal, 21 settlements were dismantled and some 9,000 settlers were evacuated by the army (while working as a correspondent in Gaza at the time, I saw many who were literally dragged out).

Many colonists saw all this as a betrayal of the state and a strategic error.

Opinion polls indicate that the majority of Israelis oppose resettlement to Gaza, and it is not government policy, but since the Hamas attacks on October 7th it is being discussed loudly – by some of the most extreme voices in the government of Israel.

Weiss proudly shows me a map of the West Bank with pink dots indicating Jewish settlements. The dots are scattered across the map, consuming land where Palestinians hope – or expected – to build their state.

Currently, there are about 700,000 Jewish settlers in these areas and the number of settlers is increasing rapidly.

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

We met with Daniella Weiss at her home in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, where red-roofed estates dot hills and valleys. She is constantly moving despite having one arm in a cast.

His vision for the future of Gaza – now home to 2.3 million Palestinians, many of them starving – is that it be Jewish.

“Gaza Arabs are not going to stay in the Gaza Strip,” she says. “Who will stay? Jews.”

She claims that Palestinians want to leave Gaza and that other countries should welcome them – although in a lengthy interview, she rarely uses the word “Palestinian”.

“The world is big,” she says. “Africa is big. Canada is big. The world will absorb the people of Gaza. How do we do that? We encourage. The Palestinians in Gaza, the good ones, will be empowered. I’m not saying forced, I’m saying empowered because they want to go. “

There is no evidence that Palestinians want to leave their homeland – although many may now dream of escaping temporarily, to save their lives.

For most Palestinians, there is no way out. The borders are tightly controlled by Israel and Egypt, and no foreign country has offered refuge.

I point out to her that her comments sound like an ethnic cleansing plan. She doesn’t deny it.

“You can call it ethnic cleansing. I repeat, the Arabs don’t want it, normal Arabs don’t want to live in Gaza. If you want to call it cleansing, if you want to call it apartheid, you choose your definition. I choose the way to protect the state of Israel.”

A few days later, Daniella Weiss is selling the idea of ​​a return 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, complete with settlements, and pamphlets titled “Go Back to Gaza.”

“People ask me how likely it is to happen?” she says.

“What were the chances back then when I came to these dark mountains and turned it into a paradise?”

The few present seem already convinced. “I want to go back immediately,” says Sarah Manella. “When they call me, I will return to Gush Katif [o antigo bloco de assentamentos israelenses em Gaza].”

What about the people who live there, we asked.

“The area is empty now,” she replies. “Now you don’t need to think about where to place the settlement, you just need to go back and establish a new settlement.”

Gaza is far from empty, but much of it has been erased after nearly six months of incessant bombardment by Israel.

It is the “largest open-air cemetery” in the world, in the words of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

More than 32,000 Palestinians were killed, according to data from the Gaza health ministry, controlled by Hamas, and the majority were women and children. The World Health Organization considers the ministry’s data to be credible.

For some in the Israeli cabinet, the Palestinian territory – now soaked in blood – is ripe for resettlement. This includes Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir – a settler himself.

In late January, he walked through a packed conference room, interrupted by hugs and handshakes. He was among friends – about 1,000 ultranationalists who were advocating a return to Gaza at the event titled “Settlements Bring Security”.

Ben Gvir, who favors “stimulating emigration”, was among a dozen cabinet ministers present.

“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 another October 7th, we need to go home and control the land.”

In the shade of an expansive tree, Yehuda Shimon is playing with his two young children, who are in hammocks hanging from the branches.

He raised 10 children here at a West Bank settler outpost called Havat Gilad, or Gilad’s Farm, near the Palestinian city of Nablus.

All around you are Palestinian villages, the closest being 500 meters away. There is no contact between them, he says.

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

“We should do it. It’s part of the Israel area,” he says. “This is the land that God gave us, and you couldn’t go to God and tell him, ‘OK, you gave it to me, and I gave it to other people’. No. I believe that in the end we will return to Gaza.”

I ask what this means for Palestinians.

“They have 52 other places to go in the world,” he says, “52 Muslim countries.” He says the new Gaza will be “another Tel Aviv”.

Settler posts like his are multiplying in the West Bank, along with larger settlements, fragmenting Palestinian territory and fueling tension.

Settler attacks on Palestinians have increased since Oct. 7, according to the UN, which has long condemned the settlements as “an obstacle to peace.”

And now settler organizations have set their sights on Gaza once again.

Is there a real prospect of settlers reaching the seaside in Gaza?

An experienced Israeli journalist told me that won’t happen. “Calls to resettle Gaza will not translate into policy,” he said.

Additional reporting by Wietske Burema, Goktay Koraltan and Ariel Tagar.