January 30, 2024
The strangest sight at the
“Conference for Israel’s Victory,” which took place on Sunday evening at
Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, wasn’t the map depicting dozens of
new settlements that Israeli settlers hope to establish throughout the Gaza
Strip after the war is over. It was the moment when thousands of people danced
around the hall singing celebratory songs — a rare spectacle in post-October 7
Israel, with most of the nation still mourning the victims of the Hamas-led
attacks and fearing for the safety of the hostages in Gaza.
Israelis look at a giant map of the Gaza Strip depicting future Israeli
settlements at the "Conference for Israel's Victory" in Jerusalem,
January 28, 2024. (Oren Ziv)
Yet for the conference’s
participants — among them 11 cabinet ministers and 15 members of the coalition,
who gleefully joined in the dancing — there is indeed something to celebrate.
For them, October 7 and the subsequent war have presented an unprecedented
opportunity to reconquer Gaza, and, if possible, to engineer the situation such
that there will be no Palestinians left when the new settlers arrive.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
began his speech with some reservation toward the joy that predominated: “I
must say that I have mixed emotions when it comes to the atmosphere in this
hall,” he said, before adding immediately: “But there is something natural and
healthy about what’s here, in the strength, in the joy, in the devotion to the
Land of Israel, which has the potential to grant enormous strength.” National
Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir talked of “voluntary migration,” apparently
understanding the need to moderate his language somewhat in light of the
ongoing legal proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Despite the impressive turnout of
ministers and Knesset members from Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, Smotrich’s
Religious Zionist Party, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, and the
ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism — four of the parties that make up the
current coalition — the true stars of the conference were the head of the
Samaria Council, Yossi Dagan, and the chairwoman of the major settler
organization Nahala, Daniella Weiss. Before October 7, they had been busy in
the West Bank, in Eviatar and Homesh, where they received the government’s
backing to re-establish previously dismantled outposts. Since the start of the
war, however, a new market has opened up for these eager entrepreneurs — and
they don’t plan on letting the opportunity go to waste.
As for the question of what will
happen to the 2.3 million Palestinians who currently call Gaza home — a
question posed by many of the foreign journalists who came to cover the
conference — Weiss had an answer she repeated over and over again: “The Arabs
will move.” She explained that, just as Israel “doesn’t give them food” in
order to pressure Hamas to release the hostages, so too should Israel “not give
them anything, so they will have to move. The world will accept this.”
Israeli settler leader Daniella
Weiss at the "Conference for Israel's Victory" in Jerusalem, January
28, 2024. (Oren Ziv)
Israeli settler leader Daniella
Weiss at the “Conference for Israel’s Victory” in Jerusalem, January 28, 2024.
(Oren Ziv)
Experienced in the complex dynamics
between the settlement movement and the Israeli government, Weiss smiled when
she was asked about how Netanyahu will respond to last week’s ruling by the ICJ
that Israel must act to prevent genocide in Gaza. “The government will accede
to pressure from the public,” she replied.
“October 7 changed history,” Weiss
declared from the stage. “Gaza, the southern gate to Israel, will be wide open.
Gazans will leave [the Strip] for all parts of the world, and the Jewish people
will make the land of our forefathers flourish. Each and every clod of the Land
of Israel that our soldiers have within their grasp gives us the necessary
strength to fight against a cruel and eternal enemy. It is not to a foreign
land that we are returning, but rather to the golden sands of our Gaza. There
is no ‘day after’ — the day after is today, it’s every day in which the Jewish
people is victorious and returns to settle in Gaza.”
To that effect, a giant map of Gaza
on the wall of the conference hall was marked with the locations of
hypothetical new settlements — spanning all the way from Rafah in the south to
Beit Hanoun in the north. There was a booth corresponding to each settlement
where you could register as an interested settler, and the booth for where Gaza
City stands today even suggested new names for all of the city’s neighborhoods:
“Zeitoun” will become “Shivat Zion”; Shuja’iya will become “Gibor Oz.”
‘The Oslo Accords are dead — Am
Yisrael Chai’
The organizers of the conference, it
seemed, weren’t especially bothered by the fact that their stance on expulsion
and settlement completely contradicts the state’s official line, as presented
at The Hague. One of the videos exhibited at the conference was the
now-infamous clip of soldiers waiting to join Israel’s ground invasion of the
Strip chanting “there are no innocents in Gaza,” which South Africa had brought
before the ICJ as evidence of genocidal intent. The idea of “transferring”
Gaza’s Palestinian population was mentioned in nearly every speech.
When Ben Gvir stood up to speak, a
few young audience members held up a banner that read, “Only transfer will
bring peace.” Ben Gvir responded to them: “Yes, and also [there must be] a
moral, logical, biblical, and Halakhic [Jewish religious law] solution,
encouraging migration and implementing the death penalty for terrorists … to
encourage them to leave.”
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi
was more direct: “There will never be a Palestinian state between the river and
the sea … We have an obligation to act, for our sake, and for the sake of the
supposedly uninvolved [civilians in Gaza], for voluntary migration. Even if the
war that was forced upon us turns the issue of voluntary migration into
coercion to the point that they say: ‘I want to [leave].’”
In contrast to the politicians, who
were at least somewhat cautious in their choice of words, other speakers were
much more blunt. Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf is one of the leaders of the movement to
resettle Gaza. Head of the settler group Harchivi Makom Aholech, which works to
take over Palestinian property in Hebron, he was sentenced to life in prison
for terror attacks with the Jewish Underground in the 1980s before being
released after seven years.
At the start of the conference, he
declared: “We need to reflect on how so many Jews could be brutally killed in
just a few hours on [October 7]. Is there just a security problem here? Many
say, justifiably, that the worldview must change after the massacre. But it is
not just the approach that needs to change; we need to go up a level, a floor,
as a nation, as a state. Let’s stop talking about parts of the Land of Israel.
What is [Areas] A, B, and C? What is the north of the [Gaza] Strip? The entire
Strip, the whole land, is part of the Land of Israel.”
The head of the Samaria Regional
Council, Yossi Dagan, was one of several speakers who drew a connection between
the “disengagement” of 2005 — in which Israel dismantled all of its settlements
in the Gaza Strip along with a handful of small settlements in the northern
West Bank — and the massacre carried out by Hamas.
Israelis dance and wave flags at the
"Conference for Israel's Victory" in Jerusalem, January 28, 2024.
(Oren Ziv)
Israelis dance and wave flags at the
“Conference for Israel’s Victory” in Jerusalem, January 28, 2024. (Oren Ziv)
“After October 7, it’s clear to
everyone that where there are settlements there is security, and where there
are no settlements there is terror,” Dagan said. “The Jewish people … is in a
rare [state of] unity in this war for its life, for the existence of the State
of Israel. We must say this loud and clear. Oslo, and the expulsion of the
disengagement, brought this Holocaust upon us. I say, and repeat after me: ‘The
Oslo Accords are dead — Am Yisrael Chai [the people of Israel live].’” The
audience roared his words back in response.
The head of the Kiryat Arba Council,
Eliyahu Liebman, whose son Elyakim was kidnapped to Gaza while he was guarding
the Nova music festival, declared that the hostages had been taken in order to
enable the return to Gaza: “This evening, we remember … all the heroes who have
fallen, been wounded, been kidnapped, so that we, God willing, will return
quickly to settle Gush Katif and northern Shomron.”
Liebman, apparently unaware of the
details of the proceedings at The Hague, invoked the biblical mandate to
eradicate the enemies of the Israelites. “The parashah [portion of the Torah]
we read this Shabbat ends with: ‘I will wipe out the memory of Amalek from the
earth.’ We, in this generation, are fighting Amalek.”
After the deliberations at the ICJ,
Israel will have a hard time claiming that the ideas expressed at the
conference don’t represent official policy. In the pamphlet that was
distributed to the audience, the message was even clearer than in the speeches.
On the question of how Israel should treat the Palestinian population in Gaza,
the lawyer Aviad Visoli — a prominent Temple movement activist — wrote: “Nakba
2, meaning the mass expulsion of the Arabs of Gaza, is also justified by the
laws of war.”
The plan to resettle Gaza may seem
far-fetched, and it’s true that Netanyahu and the security establishment may
present an obstacle — especially amid increased international scrutiny. But
it’s important to remember that in the meantime, the expulsion of Palestinians
and the settlement of Jews in their place is moving forward at lightning speed
in the West Bank, where at least 16 Palestinian communities have been expelled
by settlers — with the full backing of the army — since October 7.
Outside the conference, near the
Central Bus Station, someone had spray painted the slogan of the movement:
“Returning to Gaza.” The joy of the conference was rooted in the conviction
that this return will ensure the security of the Jewish people and of the State
of Israel. But someone else had seen the graffiti and inserted their own, less
optimistic message: ”Returning to die in Gaza.”
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