This is a gathering that will please neither Washington nor the countries, including France, which are campaigning for a two-state solution. A few thousand Israelis in favor of reestablishing settlements in the Gaza Strip, including ministers, gathered Sunday evening in Jerusalem, urging the Prime Minister to see the project through.
Members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and other far-right ministers took part, as fighting intensified between the Israeli army and Hamas in Gaza.
A song against the Oslo Accords
“The time has come to return to Gush Katif and encourage voluntary emigration,” said National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, referring to a group of Israeli settlements once established in Gaza. “Retreat brings war and if we no longer want October 7, we must return home, control the territory and […] encourage” the “voluntary” departure of Gazans, he added.
Eleven other ministers were present at the meeting, held in a crowded Jerusalem conference center, according to organizers. Speakers called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, judging that the reestablishment of settlements was the only way to ensure Israel’s security. Others sang “the Oslo accords are dead, the people of Israel live”, in reference to the agreements supposed to lead to the peaceful cohabitation of the two peoples, ratified in 1993 by the leader of the PLO Yasser Arafat and the Prime Israeli Minister Yitzhak Rabin, at the White House, in front of Bill Clinton.
The gathering demonstrates that an extremist fringe, long a minority in Israel, is currently gaining ground, at the risk of further deepening differences between Israel and the United States.
A position against the American ally
Israel has occupied the Gaza Strip as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the 1967 war. Some 400,000 Israelis today live in the West Bank in settlements considered illegal by the majority of the international community, alongside three million Palestinians. Israel, on the other hand, withdrew its nationals from 21 colonies established in the Gaza Strip in 2005. The territory is home to 2.4 million Palestinians, a large majority of whom have been displaced since the start of fighting in October.
The Israeli Prime Minister has so far never supported the plan to revive settlements in Gaza, declaring that it was “not a realistic goal”. He has also never organized a meeting of his government devoted to the post-war period. Netanyahu’s government is the most religious and ultranationalist in the country’s history. He has made the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank a priority since coming to power at the end of 2022. But his policy is in open contradiction with the approach of the United States, an unwavering ally of the Jewish state.