Israelis in recent days have pitched tents in Lebanon. A member of Knesset introduced a bill this week promoting settlement in Gaza. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government included money in the new budget to double the Golan Heights’ Jewish population.
Spurred into military action the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Israel has said all along that its goal is to neutralise the security threat the terrorist group, not to gain land. But now some Israelis see the war zones, or areas near them, as places for new Jewish settlement.
Knesset members led by a settler leader toured Gaza on Dec. 19, with the national security minister saying Israel needed to stay in a military corridor there for national security reasons.
The IDF now controls much of Gaza. Some Jews want to settle there. About 9,000 Jews lived there until 2005 when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon deemed the costs of defending them too high.
The army left and took with them the Jewish residents. Many had to be removed screaming from homes or synagogues. Israel left Gaza, occupied since 1967, to the Palestinians.
While Israel occupied parts of south Lebanon for decades, Jews never looked to settle there. The Golan Heights is a different story. Israel annexed it more than 40 years ago.
Only the United States recognizes that, but it’s land few Israelis want to be ceded back to Syria under any circumstances.
Netanyahu’s government announced plans this week to double the Jewish population there, allocating $11 million toward the goal.
One settlement looking to grow is Trump Heights, a community of 26 Jewish families close to Israel proper.
Community leader Yarden Freimann told AFP on Dec. 17 that he expects the community to double within the next year and reach 99 families within three years.
It was Trump who recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan in 2019, the year the community was launched.
About 30,000 Jews live in the Golan, outnumbering 23,000 Druze who lived there when it was Syria. Israel occupied it in 1967’s Six-Day War. Druze who live in Israel proper are citizens and serve in the IDF.
The United Nations doesn’t recognize Israel’s annexation. But Israel is firmly established there. Israelis have made it a center of the Israeli wine industry and put a ski resort on Mount Hermon.
As Assad fell the IDF occupied abandoned Syrian military positions on the Syrian half of Mount Hermon—higher ground than the Israeli half—plus the 155-square-mile buffer zone between the two countries, to keep them from being occupied by hostile rebels.
Few Israelis advocate settling the buffer zone. But with enemies having been pushed farther away, more Israelis than previously may see the Golan Heights itself as secure and attractive.
Most of Israel’s focus on settling disputed land is in what they refer to as Judea and Samaria—the West Bank. The area has strong religious and historical roots for Jews.
Most of the Bible—the wanderings of the patriarchs like Abraham, the later kingdoms under David, Solomon, and their descendants—takes place there.
It’s also the land seen as the heart of a Palestinian state in a two-state solution. But three-quarters of Israelis see that as unlikely now, since the Oct. 7 attack.
More than half a million Jews—some say as many as 800,000— now live there.
Netanyahu’s coalition, which includes West Bank leaders like Treasury Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has poured money into development and green-lighted land for more Jewish communities.
Some West Bank leaders now advocate new settlements in Gaza.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a leading advocate of settlements, toured the IDF’s Netzarim corridor in Gaza on Dec. 19.
He said that land, which divides Gaza’s south from its north, must remain under Israeli control.
Netzarim was the site of the last Jewish community removed from Gaza in 2005.
The tour was organized by the Knesset Caucus for Renewing Jewish Settlement in the Gaza Strip and the Nachala Movement, a West Bank settlers movement led by Daniella Weiss.
Ben Gvir linked the 2005 withdrawal to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
Another caucus member, Knesset member Zvi Sukkot, said: “Victory over Hamas must be clear. Absolute victory will only be achieved when the side that started this war loses territory.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though, opposes Gaza resettlement. He has said Israel would maintain security control over Gaza but “we’re not seeking to govern Gaza.”
But it was a member of his own Likud party who introduced a bill this week to allow “freedom of movement” for Jews in Gaza.
It stopped short of directly referencing resettlement but was a pointed reference to the 2005 removal of Jews from the area.
