Twenty-one years after the crime of expulsion from northern Samaria, we have completed the correction … and have returned to the settlement of Kadim
By Njoku Vincent
A group of Israeli settlers has returned to the site of Kadim, a former Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, 21 years after it was dismantled by an Israeli government.
About 30 families described by the settlers’ regional council as “pioneer families” arrived at the site on Thursday, travelling from Tel Aviv.
Their return comes as Israel’s current government, dominated by right-wing and religious nationalist parties, has backed an expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The families arrived in small groups, with some vehicles travelling under military escort. Israeli flags were seen flying from cars as they passed Palestinian villages and farmland.
Some of the newcomers brought trailers carrying furniture, bedding and building materials as preparations were made for their return to the hilltop.
At a ceremony marking the move, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described the 2005 evacuation as a mistake.
“Twenty-one years after the crime of expulsion from northern Samaria, we have completed the correction … and have returned to the settlement of Kadim,” he said, using the biblical term for the northern West Bank.
Smotrich was joined by Israel’s Justice Minister, the Speaker of the Knesset and Yossi Dagan, head of the regional settlers’ council.
Dagan said the return to Kadim was part of a wider effort and expressed hope that Israeli settlers would eventually return to Gaza, where Israel withdrew its settlers and military in 2005.
Kadim lies on a small hill outside the Palestinian city of Jenin. It was one of four Jewish settlements in the northern West Bank dismantled as part of Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan in 2005.
The plan also resulted in the withdrawal of all Israeli settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip.
At the time, the four West Bank settlements were regarded by the Israeli government as isolated and costly to protect, with limited strategic value.
But the hilltop has recently begun to change again.
White trailer homes have appeared at the site as supporters prepared for families to move back.
Journalists seeking to speak to the settlers at Thursday’s ceremony were not allowed inside. Organisers said the settlement was closed to the media.
On a dirt track behind the hill, a Palestinian vegetable farmer offered a different perspective on the return.
The man, who has lived in the house where he was born for 53 years, said he remembered watching Kadim being built when he was a child.
He also witnessed the settlers being removed when the Israeli government dismantled the community two decades later.
He said relations between the Palestinian residents and the settlers had once been relatively calm.
“Back then, the settlers were living alongside us, and we coexisted peacefully. They lived their lives and we lived ours,” he said.
The return to Kadim is taking place against the backdrop of a broader dispute over Israeli settlements in the West Bank, territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and claimed by Palestinians as part of a future independent state.
The international community, with the exception of Israel, generally considers Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank illegal under international law, a position Israel rejects.