An Israeli settler leader has told a conference on Israel’s frontier with Gaza that Palestinians will “disappear” from the territory and said that thousands of people stand ready to move there "from north to south”.
Addressing a conference on Monday also attended by Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Knesset members from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Daniella Weiss called for Palestinians living in Gaza to be relocated to other countries.
“We came here with one clear purpose: the purpose is to settle the entire Gaza Strip, not just part of it, not just a few settlements, the entire Gaza Strip from north to south,” said Weiss.
Weiss, the leader of Nachala, an orthodox settler movement which organised the conference, said there were six settler groups and more than 700 families looking to settle in Gaza, where more than 42,600 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its war against Hamas in October last year following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel.
Weiss’s comments were echoed by Ben Gvir, who later told the crowd: “We are the owners of the land”. Ben Gvir also called for Palestinians in Gaza to “voluntarily” transfer to other countries.
Monday’s conference, which was billed by organisers as “a celebration for the preparation of settling Gaza", took place near Reim kibbutz, with the sound of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of northern Gaza audible in the background and with smoke rising over the horizon a few kilometres to the west.
I never really understood what these “Settlers” are exactly doing. Do they just go to a House and be like “Yeah that’s mine now, GTFO!” or are they building Homes on somebody else’s Property? Or are they tearing down houses and building new ones for themselves? I never really understood how you can settle in an already developed place. Or all of the above?
I find it helps if you just call them “invaders”.
I think you could only call yourself a settler if you went somewhere uninhabitable and made it livable. Antarctica maybe. I don’t think “arable farmland right next door with brown people living on it” counts for much.
When you have the Israeli military supporting you, you can do a lot of things.
They settle right next to existing Palestinian towns. Then surround them by expanding. Create better infrastructure. Then exclude the Palestinians and ensure they are treat as other or not equal.
That’s the very best of situations. Ignoring that a majority are armed takeovers of occupied buildings.
First they blow up the place, flatten it, and then build their vacation homes on top of the people they killed.
From B’TSelem, an Israeli Human Rights Organization that has covered this since the 1960’s:
Quotes
https://www.btselem.org/settler_violence
I think most Israeli settlements were built in previously undeveloped places.
Previously undeveloped places that did not belong to Israel.
Forgot an important part there.
My comment was in no way a defense of Israeli settlement activity, which I find indefensible and the main obstacle to peace in the region. But to my understanding it is still factually correct that the land the settlements were built on didn’t (at least for the most part) have any residents immediately before they were built.
That’s like if some randos came to your area, built houses on the farmland around the town you live in, and then put up a wall preventing in your town from coming or going. It’s a slow seige.