Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Israel Katz have attended the official reopening of the Sa-Nur settlement in the occupied West Bank, nearly 21 years after the illegal settlement was evacuated in 2005.

“On this exciting day, we celebrate a historic correction to the criminal expulsion,” Finance Minister Smotrich said in his speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sunday, the AFP news agency reported. He said Israeli authorities were also “burying the idea of a Palestinian state”.

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Authorities have approved 126 housing units in the northern West Bank settlement, south of Jenin, and 16 families have now moved in. 

Yossi Dagan, head of the West Bank Settlements Council, was among those who left Sa-Nur in 2005, and he described moving back as a “personal closing of a circle”, adding: “We have returned to stay.”

Reversing disengagement policy

The Sa-Nur settlement was evicted as part of the disengagement policy that also saw settlers removed from Gaza. Settlers have attempted to re-establish it over the years, and it is one of four former West Bank settlements to recently be approved by the Israeli government, in violation of international law.

In March 2023, the Knesset passed an amendment to the disengagement law that prohibited Israeli settlers from staying in the former settlements of Sa-Nur, Homesh, Ganim and Kadim. Last May, Smotrich, himself a settler, announced plans for 22 new settlements in the West Bank, including Sa-Nur and Homesh. In December, Ganim and Kadim were among a list of illegal outposts recognised as settlements by the government.

Around 700,000 settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with settlement expansion increasing under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, particularly since the formation of his right-wing coalition following the 2022 election.

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Rights groups say that settlement approvals, along with settler violence, have further accelerated since October 7, 2023. A Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli settlers in Deir Jarir, near Ramallah, on April 11, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reports that March was one of the deadliest months of settler violence on record in the West Bank.

Last month, 34 new settlements were approved, which, according to Israeli organisation Peace Now, brings the total number of settlements approved since the formation of the government to 104.