WEST BANK: A new group of Israeli settlers has returned to Kadim in the occupied West Bank, about two decades after the settlement was evacuated by a previous Israeli government.
According to the regional settlers’ council, 30 “pioneer families” arrived in Kadim on Thursday from Tel Aviv, amid growing support for Jewish settlement expansion under Israel’s current government.
The settlers travelled in small groups, some accompanied by military escorts, with Israeli flags displayed on their vehicles as they passed Palestinian villages and agricultural land. Some families also brought trailers carrying furniture, bedding and construction materials.
Speaking at an opening ceremony, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the return marked what he described as a reversal of the evacuation of settlements in northern Samaria, the biblical term used by some Israelis for the northern West Bank.
Smotrich was joined at the ceremony by Israel’s Justice Minister, the Speaker of the Knesset and Yossi Dagan, head of the regional settlers’ council. Dagan also said he hoped Israeli settlers would eventually return to Gaza.
Kadim, located on a small hill outside the Palestinian city of Jenin, was evacuated in 2005 under Israel’s unilateral Disengagement Plan. The plan resulted in the withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza, as well as the dismantling of four settlements in the northern West Bank.
At the time, Israeli authorities considered the four settlements too isolated and costly to protect and of limited strategic importance.
(Inputs from BBC)
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