The Israeli government voted to promote planning for a new community near the Gaza border on Sunday.
No timeline was laid out for establishing the community whose temporary name is Hanon and will be located near Kibbutz Sa’ad.
The community will have 500 residents.
“The most important thing to give an answer to terrorism is to make an appropriate response and the second thing is to strengthen settlements – and that is what we are doing now,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We decided on the establishment of the Hanon community during the time of our previous government, and today we complete the establishment by budgeting the planning of the settlement.”
Construction and Housing Yitzhak Goldknopf said the community will house around 500 families.
In recent years, demand for residences in the Gaza periphery has increased despite rocket fire from the Strip. Most of the communities in the area are agricultural cooperatives that cannot be easily expanded to meet Israeli demand for more housing.
