Israel Reopens Evacuated Settlement in the West Bank Amid Growing International Protests

A new generation of Israeli settlers has returned to the Kadim settlement in the occupied West Bank two decades after it was evacuated by a previous Israeli government, reports the BBC.

Thirty families from Tel Aviv, according to the regional settlers’ council, arrived at the settlement today after it was officially reopened.

They did so on a wave of Jewish nationalism fueled by the current Israeli government.

All Israeli settlements and settler outposts are illegal under international law. Outposts are also illegal under Israeli law, although they are often supported and funded by state agencies.

“Twenty-one years after the crime of expulsion from northern Samaria, we have completed the correction and returned to the Kadim settlement,” said far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich at the opening ceremony, using the biblical term for the northern West Bank.

Alongside him were the Israeli Minister of Justice, the Speaker of the Knesset, and Yossi Dagan, head of the regional settlers’ council, who said that settlers would one day return to Gaza as well.

Kadim, on a small hill in front of the Palestinian city of Jenin, was evacuated in 2005 by the previous Israeli government as part of the unilateral Disengagement Plan, under which all Jewish settlers and soldiers were also withdrawn from Gaza, and three other settlements in the northern West Bank were dismantled.

At the time, those four settlements were considered too isolated and expensive to protect and of little strategic value.

When Kadim and three other settlements were evacuated in 2005, Israelis were banned from settling in the area, but the current Israeli government has overturned that ban.

Kadim is the last of the settlements evacuated in 2005 to be reopened. Ganim, Sa-Nur, and Homesh have already been officially reopened and families have moved in.

But they represent a drop in the ocean in the Israeli government’s settlement project in the area, notes the BBC. Since taking office at the end of 2022, the current Israeli government has approved more than 100 new settlements across the West Bank, including 19 in its northern part.

Western countries again yesterday condemned Israeli plans to open tenders for the construction of about 1,200 settler homes in a strategically important part of the occupied West Bank.

In a joint statement yesterday, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Canada called the decision “unacceptable” and urged Israel to “immediately withdraw these plans.”

All settlements are illegal under international law, and under international pressure, Israel has for decades postponed plans to build settlements east of Jerusalem.