Israel reestablishes Kadim settlement in West Bank with 30 families

Thirty families arrived Thursday in the Kadim settlement in the occupied West Bank, according to the regional settlers' council, completing the reopening of all four settlements that Israel evacuated in 2005. The move reverses a government-imposed ban on settlement in the area that had lasted 21 years.

Kadim was evacuated in 2005 by a previous Israeli government as part of a wider Disengagement Plan that also withdrew all Jewish settlers and soldiers from Gaza and dismantled three other northern West Bank settlements. At the time of evacuation, the four settlements were considered too isolated and costly to protect, and of little strategic value, per BBC reporting.

After the 2005 evacuation, Israelis were banned from settling in the area. Israel's current government, which took power in late 2022, overturned that ban. Kadim joins three other reopened settlements: Ganim, Sanur, and Homesh, all of which have already been formally opened with families moved in.

Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended an opening ceremony and stated: "21 years after the crime of expulsion from northern Samaria, we have completed the correction and have returned to the settlement of Kadim." Israel's Justice Minister, the Speaker of the Knesset, and Yossi Dagan, head of the regional settlers' council, also attended. Dagan vowed that settlers would one day return to Gaza as well.

Since late 2022, Israel's current government has approved more than 100 new settlements across the West Bank, including 19 in the northern West Bank. One new settlement, Emek Dotan west of Jenin, was formally opened last Sunday and now houses almost two dozen Jewish families. According to Hagit Ofran, director of the Settlement Watch programme at Peace Now, the rapid construction in the Jenin area is part of a wider race by the Israeli government to expand settlements before Israeli elections scheduled for October.

Palestinians living near the reopened and new settlements report fear and harassment. A Palestinian teacher at Emek Dotan told the BBC: "Groups come and stand opposite our houses, filming us. Yesterday they came and stood here, filming me and my children. Every time my wife stepped outside, they filmed her too. They try to enter our homes. And they go house by house, shining powerful floodlights directly through all the windows at two or three in the morning."

A Palestinian vegetable farmer living on a hillside near Kadim said he watched the settlement built for the first time, then watched as settlers were forced out by the government two decades later. He told the BBC: "Back then, the settlers were living alongside us, and we coexisted peacefully. They lived their lives and we lived ours." He said his family fled to the area from Haifa during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Now, watching the settlers return, he expressed fear: "There's no more displacement left in me. We're living with a sense of resignation. It's a life of fear."

BBC reporting states that all Israeli settlements and settler outposts are illegal under international law. The BBC's request to speak to people at the opening ceremony was refused; they were told no media were allowed to enter the settlement.