On Tuesday, Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli tweeted: “I proposed last night at the cabinet meeting that as a response to the murder of our people, we will charge an immediate price in land appropriation, and create another northern corridor, that is, retake control of the northern boundary area (where the settlements of Dugit, Nisanit, and Elei Sinai stood before the 2005 expulsion), and move the perimeter fence to the south.”
הצעתי אמש בישיבת הממשלה כמענה לרצח אנשינו לגבות מחיר מיידי בקרקע וליצור מסדרון צפוני נוסף, כלומר להשתלט מחדש על מרחב התוחמת הצפונית (מרחב דוגית, ניסנית ואלי סיני לשעבר) ולהעתיק דרומה את גדר המערכת. pic.twitter.com/055VWoitM1
— עמיחי שיקלי – Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) September 3, 2024
For our readers who have been in a coma since the summer of 2005, this was when the Israeli government decided to solve the terrorism problem in the Gaza Strip by withdrawing all its forces, including 8,000 settler families, and abandon the Philadelphi corridor on Egypt’s border, presumably so the PLO and Hamas can start a thriving business of smuggling books and videos about peace, love, and coexistence. The experiment, though admirable, resulted eventually in the October 7 Hamas massacre – the nursing staff probably woke you up for that one.
The movement seeking a return to Gaza never died among right-wing Israelis, although Prime Minister Netanyahu said a few times since October 7 that “The issue of settling in Gaza is not realistic.” But in his press conference last Monday Netanyahu promised to avenge Hamas’s cold-blooded murder of six Israeli hostages, and so far, many are wondering what can he do that would be worse than toppling all of Gaza’s remaining buildings, blowing up every Hamas tunnel, and killing close to 20,000 Hamas terrorists.
Well, a group calling itself “Returning to settling Gaza” is pushing Minister Chikli’s idea of punishment through land confiscation, because while fanatical Islamists don’t care for their lives or the lives of others, their land matters to them. So, take it away from them and settle Jews there.
Former IDF Spokesman General (res.) Moti Almaz on June 29 was asked on News12 if it’s the right thing to carve out slices of Gaza, and responded: “It’s a price tag here for those who raised a hand against Jews in Israel. They will lose territory. this is a price tag that Zionism set and the State of Israel decided to give up. We must learn the lesson of October 7 – we must have territory. We will use this territory not as an occupation, not as a finger in the eye. When you take an area and plant something in the area – you say something about it. I am here because that’s the only way I can protect the Gaza envelope communities.”
A softer message than Chikli’s call for territorial punishment, but presumably with similar results.
On Saturday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who today marks the left borderline of Likud, reiterated his call on the Netanyahu cabinet to revoke their Thursday’s decision to stay in the Philadelphia corridor. Like Gen. Almaz’s idea, staying in Philadelphi is not an act of punishment, but the only way for Israel to protect itself against a recurring rise of terrorism in Gaza.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich admonished Galant, reminding him that “Hamas murdered our hostages in cold blood precisely to make us surrender and accept its demands and allow it to survive and restore its capabilities and attack Israel again as part of the Iranian extermination plan.”
According to Smotrich, “The Cabinet will not allow a surrender deal that would abandon Israel’s security but will direct the IDF and the security establishment to charge heavier prices from Hamas and those who give it shelter and concealment, and will intensify the war until Hamas’s destruction and the return of the Hostages. This morning, the Gaza Strip must be reduced in size. IDF forces should move two km inland from the current border and clear everything in their way. This territory will never be returned to the Gazans.”
To which the Minister adds his point that we might as well renew Jewish settlement there.
Starting in early November 2023, IDF reservists undertook efforts to transform the northern region of the Gaza Strip into a desert landscape. Their objective was to clear a one-kilometer-wide strip along the border, as part of an Israeli initiative to establish a security zone on the Gaza side, which would be designated as a kill zone.
In mid-January, Secretary of State Tony Blinken publicly dismissed any alterations to the territorial boundaries of Gaza.
By late January, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant informed U.S. officials that he and the IDF would prevent the reconstruction of illegal outposts or settlements by Israeli settlers within the Gaza Strip. When questioned by Ambassador Jack Lew and humanitarian affairs envoy David Satterfield regarding whether the buffer zone could serve as a foundation for settlements, Gallant asserted that he would not permit the rebuilding of settlements in Gaza and emphasized that the buffer zone would be temporary.
Oded Basyuk, the head of IDF operations, also stated that the IDF would prohibit Israeli civilians from entering the buffer zone due to security concerns.
However, while Gallant was assuring his American counterparts that no settlements would be established, 12 Israeli ministers, including three from Likud, along with 18 coalition MKs, participated in a conference in Jerusalem advocating for the reestablishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza. This event marked the largest political demonstration in favor of rebuilding settlements in Gaza since October 7.
