March 1, 2024
Over 100 Israelis stormed Erez
Crossing at the northern tip of Gaza yesterday afternoon in the most
significant attempt to re-establish Jewish settlements in the Strip since the
war began. A small number managed to cross several hundred meters into Gaza before
being intercepted by Israeli soldiers, while around 20 others entered the area
between the two walls comprising the barrier that encages the Strip. There,
they established an “outpost” in the style seen commonly in the West Bank,
building for several hours without the army or police interfering.
From the first moments of the war,
it was clear that right-wing Israeli politicians and settler leaders sensed an
opportunity to radically shift the status quo in Israel-Palestine. For months,
calls to resettle Gaza — often in the same breath as calling to expel the
Strip’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents — have been getting louder, not least
at a major conference in Jerusalem in January at which senior officials laid
out their plans. In parallel, right-wing activists — mostly youth — have been
coming regularly to the Gaza fence to demonstrate against the entry of
humanitarian aid into the Strip. Yesterday’s action, however, marked a new peak
in their activities.
At around 2 p.m., activists began
gathering at a train station in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, close to
Gaza. At that initial meeting point — for what was ostensibly a “protest”
honoring Harel Sharvit, a settler who was killed while serving in Gaza — the
mood was calm, even sleepy. A police car drove past, unmoved by the scene. From
there, the activists drove in private cars toward the Erez Checkpoint, the only
civilian crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, which has been
defined by the Israeli army as a “closed military zone” since it was briefly
taken over by Palestinians amid the Hamas-led October 7 attacks on southern
Israel.
As they approached the checkpoint,
the activists got out of their cars and began marching. At this point, they
were met by another convoy of vehicles full of “hilltop youth” — young, violent
settlers who regularly establish new outposts across the West Bank and attack
Palestinians to force them off their land. At least two of them were armed with
rifles of the kind used by the military, and they brought construction
materials to build an outpost.
At a certain point, some of them
started running toward the checkpoint and managed to cross it unhindered, with
the few soldiers present unable to stop them. In the space between the two
walls enclosing the Strip about 20 of them began erecting two structures using
the materials they had brought: wooden planks and poles, and iron sheets for
the roofs. Meanwhile, a handful of settler youth ran further inside Gaza, again
unhindered by soldiers.
On the soldiers’ radios, the message
came through that a number of people had crossed into Gaza, and military jeeps
and even two tanks were sent to look for them. About half an hour later, a
military jeep brought the youth back to the Israeli side of the crossing,
without arresting them. They exited the jeep to applause from the other
activists, joining the bigger group as they chanted, “It’s ours.”
For several hours, those who had
crossed into the space between the two walls continued building the outpost —
which they named New Nisanit, after one of the settlements in Gaza that was
evacuated as part of the 2005 “disengagement” — without interference. As in the
West Bank, the soldiers stood nearby and provided protection, rather than
trying to stop them.
‘This is our country’
Amiel Pozen and David Remer, both
18, were two of the settlers who managed to cross around 500 meters into Gaza.
After being picked up and dropped back at the checkpoint by the Israeli army,
the pair spoke to +972.
“There was no fear of being inside
[Gaza], the Holy One is with us and the IDF is here helping us,” Remer said.
“We came here [because] we wanted to go home. I live in a community of
deportees from Gush Katif [the Jewish settlement bloc inside Gaza that was
evacuated in 2005], and we wanted to go back. After everything that happened,
there’s no doubt that we have to go back.
“The feeling is very good, like
coming home,” Remer continued. “It is ours. The Holy One, blessed be He, said
it is ours. If we will not be there, we know what will be there.”
Pozen added: “We have come to
represent the entire public, the Jewish people. We want to return to the whole
Land of Israel, to all parts of our Holy Land. There are no ‘two states for two
peoples’ — that’s not right. The people of Israel belong to the Land of
Israel.”
Regarding the possibility of
persuading the government to support resettling Gaza, Pozen said: “I would like
the government to understand [what] the majority of the people already
understood: We are here. It is ours. There is no political or international
obstacle. We don’t need to consider anyone else. It is an internal matter. We
need to go to Gaza, destroy all the terror there, and build there ourselves.”
Another of the settlers intercepted
by the army after crossing further into Gaza showed his friends a photo he took
on his phone of a strawberry plant in a Palestinian field, saying: “Look how
beautiful the country is.”
Over the course of the evening,
settler youth continued to bypass the army and run to the outpost. Many of them
did so by crawling through a hole in the fence that was likely created during
the events of October 7, until soldiers brought a bulldozer to close it with
dirt.
Many of the youth were from the same
organizations that have spent the past several weeks attempting — often
successfully — to block humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. In their eyes,
there is a connection between withholding aid to Palestinians and re-establishing
Jewish settlements in Gaza: both are seen as a means toward achieving a
decisive “victory.”
Mechi Fendel, a right-wing activist
from Sderot, told 972: “We came here to declare that the day after this war is
over, we must settle, we must spread Jewish towns all over the Gaza Strip.
Because without that, it’s going to become a hornet’s nest. You can’t leave a
vacuum. There’s no reason why we want that to happen again. I live one
kilometer away from the Gaza Strip. I can’t have terrorists as neighbors — and
they showed their true colors on October 7.”
Regarding the construction of the
outpost near the fence, she explained: ”It’s a symbolic act, showing that we
built two houses. They came in with these big pieces of wood and they actually
built two structures here in the Gaza Strip. Of course it’s symbolic because
they’re not going to stay here tonight. But the point is this is where we have
to be. This is our country. We cannot let a full strip of land be unsettled.”
And what would happen to the
Palestinians in Gaza if Jewish settlements were to be established? “If they’re
willing to take Israeli jurisdiction, if they’re willing to have us come in and
control their education system and help them financially, then let them stay if
they’re peaceful,” Fendel said. “I so far haven’t found a Palestinian that’s
peaceful. As I described, Palestinian workers [who worked inside Israel] for
tens of years became terrorists in a second.
“I think that the government, when
it sees that we are behind them, that the people want this, the government will
be for it,” she continued. “Because the government also doesn’t want a hornet’s
nest of terrorists cropping up. I think that if we have the people and the
willingness and we show that we’re there, we’re brave, and we want to do it,
the government will help us.”
‘First the soldiers stormed in, now
the settlers’
The dynamics were reminiscent of
typical scenes in the West Bank, with settlers being given freedom of action
while the soldiers stood idly by — despite being inside a closed military zone
and some of them even entering a combat zone. Some of the soldiers could be
seen hugging the activists. One soldier told +972 that the soldiers support the
activists and that the problem is “the media that wants action, to film
soldiers beating Jews.”
Even though soldiers have the
authority to detain Israeli citizens — and have detained journalists and other
civilians who approached the fence in recent months — they invariably avoid
detaining settlers who break the law in the West Bank, and this was the case
yesterday too. One of the activists, who told +972 that he was an off-duty
soldier and wore his military weapon over civilian clothes, said he left the
area early because soldiers warned him they would “kick [him] out of the army.”
The soldiers spoke calmly with the
activists, including the well-known Kahanist Baruch Marzel who arrived at a
later stage. “It’s like the soldiers who stormed [into Gaza] — now they [the
settler youth] are storming,” Marzel said to one of the soldiers.
Later on, when they were leaving,
Marzel told +972 that the action reminded him of the “first settlement in
Sebastia” — a village near Nablus in the West Bank where, some 50 years ago, a
group of settlers from the Gush Emunim movement attempted to establish a Jewish
settlement and defied the government’s attempts to evict them until it
relented. He added that the main issue for him is not settling Gaza but
deporting the Palestinians to “all the countries that support them.”
A security official present at the
scene expressed to +972 his displeasure that the activists had been able to
cross the checkpoint with such ease. “If they managed to enter Gaza, that means
[Palestinians] can also enter in the opposite direction,” he said.
Police officers who arrived at the
scene acted with the same indifference as the soldiers. They seemed to be in no
hurry to intervene, and initially arrested only one protester. After sunset,
around 7 p.m., some of the activists began to leave, and the rest were
subsequently dispersed by police. A total of nine people were arrested and
taken to a police station last night.
Israeli soldiers play cards inside a
building in Al-Shati refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip, November 16, 2023.
(Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Rugs, cosmetics, motorbikes: Israeli
soldiers are looting Gaza homes en masse
Smoke rises after Israeli airstrikes
in several location in the Gaza Strip, October 9, 2023. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)
‘A mass assassination factory’:
Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza
Large boulders block the entry and
exit of cars outside Beit Jala, occupied West Bank. (Yuval Abraham)
Settlers and army blocking West Bank
roads to Palestinians
In response to an inquiry from +972
last night, a police spokesperson stated: “Israel Police forces were called in
the afternoon to near the Erez Crossing, after protesters arrived and a handful
of them crossed the fence into the Gaza Strip in violation of a general’s
order. In light of the real danger to the protesters’ lives, the police forces
were forced to operate within the territory of the Gaza Strip, where some of
the protesters confronted them and refused to leave, which left the police no
choice but to arrest nine of them for the offenses of violating a general’s
order and failing [to obey] a police officer.
“The protesters were brought to the
police station for questioning, at the end of which it will be decided which of
them will be brought before the Court of Appeal tomorrow for a discussion of
his case.” Police did not respond to another request for information today
about whether those arrested were charged, but it seems they were released last
night.
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