West Bank21 August, 20263 min read
Bezalel Smotrich and Yossi Dagan Back Israeli Families Returning to Kadim Settlement Near Jenin
This article is an automated aggregation of coverage from news outlets. Our editorials offer in-depth analysis curated by the NewsCord team.
About 30 families returned to Kadim, east of Jenin, two decades after evacuation. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended Kadim's return alongside Yossi Dagan.
8 outlets told this the same way.
Ynetnews was read line by line by the Watchdog: 3.8. See the score →
Kadim returns after 20 years
Israeli families began moving into the occupied West Bank settlement of Kadim on Thursday, the last of four communities from which Israel withdrew more than two decades ago to be repopulated. The move came a week after Israel officially reopened neighboring Ganim, and the Samaria regional council called the return to Kadim a "historic milestone". The regional council said 30 families were moving to live permanently in the settlement, accompanied on Thursday by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and head of the Samaria regional council, Yossi Dagan.
BBC reported that 30 "pioneer families" arrived in Kadim on Thursday from Tel Aviv, with some under military escort and blue and white Israeli flags fluttering as they passed Palestinian villages and farmlands. Kadim sits on a small hillside outside the Palestinian city of Jenin, and the BBC said it was evacuated in 2005 as part of a wider unilateral Disengagement Plan that also saw all Jewish settlers and soldiers pulled out of Gaza.
Smotrich, Dagan and Palestinian fears
At the opening ceremony, Smotrich said, "Twenty-one years after the crime of the expulsion from northern Samaria, we have completed the correction" while Yossi Dagan vowed that settlers would one day return to Gaza too. The BBC reported that a Palestinian vegetable farmer living in the house he was born in told it, "Back then, the settlers were living alongside us, and we coexisted peacefully." The BBC also quoted the farmer saying, "I'm afraid of the events spreading around us," and he described how people he said were returning had driven his nephews away from their vegetables and citrus trees.
In parallel, Tariq Aghbaria, head of the settlement file for Jenin Governorate, told WAFA that the return of about 30 families to Kadim represents a political and field step aimed at reconfiguring the reality of the governorate. Aghbaria warned that the most dangerous aspect of the measures lies in their impact on the map of Jenin Governorate, saying they could force Palestinian citizens to abandon their lands and threaten the possibility of establishing a geographically continuous Palestinian state.
European pressure and what’s at risk
France, Italy, Britain, and Germany urged Israel to "halt settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank" and to "immediately cancel" bids related to the construction of more than 1,200 housing units. The France 24 report said the statement came on the same day that Israeli families began moving to Kedum, the last of four settlements reopened by Israel after more than 20 years since the withdrawal. France 24 said the four countries warned that decisions related to the settlements will continue to weaken Israel’s standing on the international stage and that the "E-1" settlement would jeopardize the prospects for a two-state solution.
In the BBC account of Kadim’s reopening, it said Israel’s current government overturned a ban on settling in the area, and Peace Now’s Hagit Ofran said the rapid construction in Jenin is part of a wider race by the Israeli government to expand settlements before Israeli elections are held in October. The BBC also reported that Kadim is the last of the settlements evacuated in 2005 to reopen, after Ganim, Sanur and Homesh had already been formally opened and families moved in.