A prominent settler from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party is taking advantage of a moment of national crisis to urge him to restore West Bank-style settlements in the Gaza Strip as a defence belt, according to Politico.
Yossi Dagan, who heads the settler community in the West Bank, stated that the time has come to reverse time back to 2005 and rebuild the settlements in the Gaza Strip. He explained that the settlements would act as heavily guarded outposts to prevent a repeat of attacks like the surprise Hamas assault on October 7.
Dagan is closely associated with right-wing American Christian evangelicals and has been a staunch supporter of former US President Donald Trump. Dagan’s critics believe that building such settlements would undermine rather than protect Israel’s national security.
Netanyahu has traditionally been a strong supporter of settlement expansion in West Bank lands that came under Israeli control after the 1967 Six Day War, but a return to the Gaza Strip would be a step toward dramatic escalation.
US President Joe Biden has warned that West Bank settlers are “pouring gasoline on fire” in the Middle East conflict by launching brutal attacks on Palestinians.
Israel’s official position is that the Gaza operation is a temporary blow against Hamas, not an occupation. But many Palestinians are sceptical, especially after Netanyahu’s remarks that Israel should resume a kind of military control over the enclave for an “indefinite period.”
Palestinians are particularly alarmed by the idea that Israeli forces could now divide Gaza into zones of military control, leaving Arab communities isolated, just as has happened to hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
“The government will have to keep a part of the land in its possession. The government cannot afford to and morally can’t go back to what it was before because we promised, ‘never again.’ It won’t be possible in all parts of Gaza. But in the northern part, yes. There should be a protective belt. There should be life, there should be people, there should be the army. And it would help prevent October 7 happening again.”
However, many Israelis believe Dagan’s strategy is flawed. Tamir Pardo, who resigned in 2016 as director of the Mossad intelligence agency, argued that settlers would need to be shielded, not become a shield.
They don’t defend us: we have to defend them.
Last month marked an increased level of violence in the West Bank. Israeli settlers claim the attacks are initiated by Palestinians. Palestinians, however, claim the opposite: settlers are trying to grab more land and intimidate them into leaving their villages. According to the UN, 167 Palestinians have been killed by the Israel Defence Forces, with eight killed by settlers in the past month.
US Vice President Kamala Harris “raised the need to increase stability and security in the West Bank and hold extremist settlers accountable for violent acts,” the White House stated.
Dagan fought against Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip when then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon oversaw the demolition of 21 settlements and ended army rule of the enclave. Several settlements were also demolished in the West Bank. Dagan barricaded himself on the roof of an ancient fort in an attempt to stop the final evacuation of hundreds of settlers from the West Bank.
But we are still able to act as a protective belt for Israel. One thing is clear, if you give land, you don’t get peace.
Some Israeli defence officials are also lobbying for permanent changes in the Gaza Strip. In mid-October, the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, an Israeli think tank, urged Netanyahu to seize a “unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the entire Gaza Strip.”
This was backed by Israel’s Intelligence Ministry, a government think tank, which has recommended relocating Gazans to Egypt’s northern Sinai. However, President Biden claimed that reoccupying Gaza would be a “big mistake.”
On Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told foreign ministers of the G7 group of industrialised democracies meeting in Tokyo that Washington opposes the “forcible displacement of Palestinians.”
“No re-occupation of Gaza after the conflict ends, no attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.”
Dagan stated that Biden should come to inspect the settlements in northern Shomron to see how important they were to Israel’s security because the American leader had been “getting the wrong picture from the press.”
Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet intelligence service, stated this week:
We are now rolling out the Gaza nakba [catastrophe].
