Dozens of settler activists enter Gaza, plant Israeli flags in bid to resettle enclave

‘Gaza belongs to the people of Israel,’ declares Nachala group head Daniella Weiss, as families in the movement fly Israeli flags near former Jewish settlements

Two groups of settler activists from the Nachala settlement organization crossed into Gaza on Thursday, marking the latest bid by ultranationalist stalwarts to anchor a Jewish presence in the enclave.

In the evening, several dozen men, women, young children and babies belonging to one of the group’s settlement cadres gathered around a large Israeli flag, in a photo published by the Nachala movement.

They planted the flag at a site that the organization claimed was near the former settlement of Morag in the southern part of the territory.

Earlier in the day, another group of Nachala activists crossed into Gaza and planted a flag that the organization said was at the site of the former kibbutz and settlement of Kfar Darom in the central Gaza Strip.

The IDF said it removed the activists and prevented others from entering the territory.

Nachala staged its Gaza entry and flag-waving mission as part of its efforts advocating for the establishment of new Jewish settlements in Gaza, and its declared policy of supporting the expulsion of Palestinians from the enclave.

The group has campaigned for Jewish settlement inside Gaza since the early months of the war against Hamas, sparked by the Palestinian terror group’s attack inside Israel on October 7, 2023.

It aims to reestablish the Gush Katif settlements that were fully evacuated during Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005. The movement sensed an opening in Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas, and activists are now pushing the government to take concrete steps towards resettlement.

“It is precisely now that we must say in a clear voice what is obvious: Gaza belongs to the people of Israel,” said Nachala leader Daniella Weiss. “We must begin to settle in Gaza now.”

Just over a week before the start of the ceasefire in October this year, Nachala organized a similar initiative, but did not send activists into the Strip itself.

Instead, the group’s activists set up an encampment near the border and demanded that the government allow them to celebrate the Sukkot holiday on the ruins of the former settlement of Nisanit inside the enclave.

Before its implementation, the group called the Trump plan for ending the war “an awful capitulation,” which, “if implemented, will bring about the next massacre.”

The group insisted that “the only victory is the conquest of all of Gaza, the expulsion of the enemy, it has already been proven that all Gazans are the enemy, and Jewish settlement in the entire Gaza strip.”

The movement’s ideology has support in the government. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called the enclave an “inseparable part” of Israel, and other ministers and lawmakers have been urging the leadership to impose military rule over it and reestablish settlements in the Strip.