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As Israel fights Hamas, activists on the right are calling to rebuild settlements in Gaza
NITZAN B, Israel (JTA) — Since Oct. 7, Benjamin Netanyahu has largely avoided face-to-face meetings with ordinary Israeli citizens. One exception occurred in mid-November, when the Israeli prime minister met with a group of Israelis evacuated from the Gaza border, including former Gaza Strip settlers who presented him with a request: to return to their uprooted homes once Israel’s war with Hamas was over.
“The Gaza Strip won’t let us rest, the land of Israel won’t let us rest until the people of Israel return to settle it, and only then will it flourish” one of the participants, Zehorit Cohen, told Netanyahu in a video clip that has since circulated online. Cohen is a former resident of the Gaza bloc of settlements, known as Gush Katif.
“It has nothing to do with strategy or security or economics or anything,” she said. “We need to go back there because it’s the land of Israel, and the land of Israel calls to us.”
Israel evacuated 8,000 settlers and all of its troops from Gaza in 2005, a withdrawal that split Israeli society and that, for the uprooted settlers, still festers as an open wound. Now, as the Israeli military reconquers broad swaths of the coastal territory in its campaign to destroy Hamas, former Gush Katif residents and other settler leaders are standing at the vanguard of mounting calls to rebuild the evacuated settlements.
“Today, after this thing, everyone understands that settlements equal security, and where there aren’t settlements, there’s terror, massacre and Holocaust,” Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council of settlements in the northern West Bank, said in a recent interview on Israeli Channel 14, a right-wing station.
Jewish resettlement inside Gaza has no international support and is understood by even some right-wing lawmakers to be inadvisable. But Dagan, along with settler activist Daniella Weiss, is leading a coalition of right-wing groups using the current war as a springboard to intensify a push for a return to Gush Katif.
Their coalition recently held a conference that drew some 200 people and at least one lawmaker, according to Haaretz. The group has already drawn up a list of families who have committed to relocating to a future resettlement project in Gaza.
“The true victory over Hamas will be to take territory back and establish settlements,” Dagan said.
Politicians on the far right have long called for reestablishing Gush Katif, including an Israeli government minister who did so earlier this year. Now, the war has brought those demands squarely into the mainstream.
A mid-November poll of Israel’s Channel 12 News found that 44% of Israelis are in favor of resettling Gush Katif, with 39% opposed and 17% “unsure.” A Hebrew University poll in December found that enthusiasm had declined, with 33% in favor of settlement in Gaza while 55% are opposed.
In the international arena, however, and even among Israel’s right-wing leadership, the idea appears to be a non-starter. Netanyahu has denounced the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, called the disengagement, but he voted for it as a member of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government at the time. While he has said Israeli troops will remain in Gaza for the foreseeable future, he called the resettlement of Gush Katif “not a realistic objective” of the war against Hamas.
And President Joe Biden called a potential reoccupation of Gaza a “big mistake” in an October “60 Minutes” interview. In March, his administration rebuked Netanyahu’s government for repealing a portion of the 2005 disengagement law.
Former Israeli right-wing officials have also criticized the movement to return to Gush Katif. Yonatan Bashi, who was one of the leading officials overseeing the implementation of the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, said trying to settle several thousand Israelis in a territory inhabited by millions of Palestinians would be an error.
“From the beginning, the idea that we went to live in the Gaza Strip was a big mistake, not because of ideology but because there were 1.6 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip versus 7,000 or 8,000 Jews,” Bashi told Israel National News last month, estimating 2005 population figures. “Whoever thought our problem with the strip was geographical was wrong then and is wrong now.”
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who took a lead role in advocating for the disengagement plan and later became an outspoken advocate of territorial withdrawal, said the idea that settlements in Gaza provide security is “utter nonsense.”
“Had we remained in Gush Katif, we would have been in the kishkes of Gaza, and everything would have happened years ago,” he said, using the Yiddish word for guts. Instead, he blames the Oct. 7 attacks on reports that the army diverted troops from the Gaza border to the West Bank leading up to the attack.
“If our soldiers had stayed next to the border and were not … protecting the settlers so they can attack Palestinians in the West Bank and destroy their olive groves, what happened would not have occurred,” said Olmert.
Far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu recently told Israel’s public broadcaster, “I want to return and establish settlements in the strip, but I’m not sure now is the time to do it.”
Many former Gush Katif residents and their ideological supporters feel themselves pulled back toward Gaza by trauma from a home that was lost — one that is connected to a historical right-wing Zionist mandate to control the entire land of Israel. For years after the disengagement, many of the evacuated settlers lived in temporary housing. Some communities have reconstituted themselves elsewhere. The former Gush Katif settlers generally refer to the withdrawal as an “expulsion.”
At the Gush Katif Heritage Center in Nitzan B, a southern Israeli town established to house evacuated settlers, there is a constant mourning over what was lost and an unfading desire for a return to Gush Katif.
“Here is a memorial — not a museum for something that was and is finished, but a memorial for what continues to live in our hearts” said Shimon Samson, a 71-year old guide at the center who lived in the small Gush Katif settlement of Gadid beginning in 1980, a decade after the Gaza settlements were founded.
Samson pointed to a historical Jewish presence in the ancient city of Gaza that dates back centuries, as exemplified by a replica mosaic of King David, on display by the center’s entrance, based on an original discovered in a fifth-century Gazan synagogue in 1965, shortly before Gaza was conquered by Israel from Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War.
According to Samson, approximately 40 of the Israelis killed in the Oct. 7 attack were family members of the first generation of Gush Katif settlers, who left their farms in the Gaza border region to receive government-sponsored land inside Gaza.
“At first there were no problems,” recalled Samson nostalgically of the initial period of Israeli settlement in Gaza. He recalled local rabbis permitting eating fresh fish on the beachfront in Gaza City and even dining at a halal falafel stand.
The situation deteriorated with the advent of the first intifada in 1987. As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian Authority was given control over much of Gaza including the cities and refugee camps now seeing fierce battles. Violence escalated again during the second intifada two decades ago.
All told, the memorial center lists 42 civilians — not including soldiers — who were killed in terror attacks across Gush Katif’s history. Samson said another 40 community members died prematurely after the “expulsion” in 2005 from “depression, heart attack and other ailments caused by losing millions of dollars and their homes,” including two suicides. Israeli researchers found that former Gush Katif residents were at an increased risk of diabetes and hypertension.
A Haaretz report from 2005 found that 85 members of Israel’s security forces were killed in Gaza since the start of the second intifada in 2000, while 2,600 Palestinians were killed in total in the territory between 1967 and 2005. Many more Palestinians have been killed in the repeated rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007 after a brief civil war with a rival Palestinian faction.
Nadin Cohen, a 70-year old immigrant from France who was evacuated from Gush Katif, now has a home in Nitzan B lined with photos of seaside vistas from her old home. Samson and Cohen both say they are too old to consider uprooting themselves again, but they both consider their grandchildren among the “many youths who are interested in settling Gush Katif once again,” Cohen said.
While such a return may seem unrealistic, evacuated settlers still have faith that it can happen. Limor Son Har-Melech, a far-right lawmaker who was evacuated from a northern West Bank settlement as part of the 2005 withdrawal, quoted the Bible while expressing her belief that the residents of Gush Katif will yet return.
“We are a nation of God. This is the land that the creator of the world gave us,” she said in a video she posted to social media last week. “We just need to believe in this. If we just believe in this, God willing, we will win.”
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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Slams Mamdani For Defense of ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Slogan as Pressure Mounts on Presumptive Mayoral Nominee
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand speaks during the second night of the first Democratic presidential candidates debate in Miami, Florida, US Photo: June 27, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Segar.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has condemned presumptive New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani for his defense of the controversial phrase “globalize the intifada.”
During a Thursday appearance on Brian Lehrer’s WNYC radio show, Gillibrand called on Mamdani to distance himself from the phase, arguing that it endangers Jewish citizens of New York City. Gillibrand added that many of her Jewish constituents are “alarmed” at Mamdani’s defense of the slogan.
“As a leader of a city as diverse as New York City, with 8 million people, as the largest Jewish population in the country, he should denounce it,” she said. “That’s it. Period. You can’t celebrate it. You can’t value it. You can’t lift it up. That is the challenge that Jewish New Yorkers have had certainly since … Oct. 7. It is exactly what they have felt.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) , issued a statement urging all participant in the Big Apple’s mayoral race to forcefully condemn antisemitism and anti-Jewish rhetoric.
“At this time of record antisemitism, our country needs leaders at all levels who are unequivocal in condemning this oldest of hatreds,” Greenblatt said in a news release. “We call on all candidates not only to condemn and avoid using language that is harmful to the Jewish community, but also to disassociate themselves and publicly disavow it.”
Greenblatt stressed that the ADL will be “forthright in calling out antisemitism during this campaign season, whatever the source,” and called on candidates to lay out specific plans to support New York’s Jewish community.
New York City, home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, experienced a surge of incidents in 2024 alone, more than any other U.S. metropolitan area, according to ADL’s annual audit.
The organization pointed to phrases like “globalize the Intifada,” the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)” movement, and the slogan “From the River to the Sea” as examples of rhetoric that undermines Jewish safety and legitimacy. According to the ADL, such language invokes a decades-old history of attacks on Jews, denies the Jewish right to self-determination, and often serves to incite violence.
In addition to calling out antisemitic speech, the ADL is pressing candidates to explain how they will ensure the safety and security of the Jewish community while upholding their constitutional rights. This includes protecting the ability of Jewish New Yorkers to live, worship, work, and gather without fear of harassment, and to guard against the demonization of Jews, including Israelis.
“Antisemitic rhetoric should have no place in our electoral discourse,” Greenblatt said. “We need to know the specific plans of candidates to support the Jewish community. This is an issue for all candidates to explain in detail where they stand.”
Mamdani, a progressive representative in the New York State Assembly, has also sparked outrage after engaging in a series of provocative actions, such as appearing on the podcast of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas influencer Hasan Piker and vowing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.
During an event hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York last month, Mamdani also declined to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
“I believe that Israel has a right to exist with equal rights for all,” Mamdani said in a carefully worded response when asked, sidestepping the issue of Israel’s existence specifically as a “Jewish state” and seemingly suggesting Israeli citizens do not enjoy equal rights.
Then during a New York City Democratic mayoral debate, he once again refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, sparking immediate backlash among the other candidates.
In 2023, while speaking at a Democratic Socialists of America convention in New York, Mamdani encouraged the audience to applaud for Palestinian American community activist Khader El-Yateem, saying “If you don’t clap for El-Yateem, you’re a Zionist.”
High-profile Democratic leaders in New York such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries have congratulated and complemented Mamdani, but have not yet issued an explicit endorsement. Each lawmaker has indicated interest in meeting with the presumptive Democratic mayoral nominee prior to making a decision on a formal endorsement.
The post Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Slams Mamdani For Defense of ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Slogan as Pressure Mounts on Presumptive Mayoral Nominee first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Rejects US Talks, Signals It May Block UN From Nuclear Sites as Trump Leaves Door Open to Future Bombings
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi addresses a special session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 20, 2025. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Iran announced Friday that it will not engage in nuclear talks with the United States, rejecting a two-week deadline set by US President Donald Trump for renewed negotiations aimed at resolving the ongoing standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program.
In a televised speech, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi condemned what he described as Washington’s “complicity in the Israeli regime’s war of aggression against Iran,” and slammed recent US military strikes as a betrayal of diplomacy and a blow to any prospects for dialogue.
“Americans want to negotiate and have sent messages several times, but we clearly said that as long as [the Israeli] aggression doesn’t stop, there’s no place for dialogue,” the top Iranian diplomat said in an address on state television.
“No agreement has been made on the restart of negotiations. There has not even been any talk of negotiations,” Araghchi continued. “The subject of negotiations is out of question at present.”
However, he reassured that Tehran remains committed to diplomacy, but the decision to resume negotiations with Washington must be carefully evaluated.
“It is still early to say that the conditions are right for negotiations,” Araghchi said.
Meanwhile, Trump said he would consider carrying out further strikes on Iran if US intelligence reveals new concerns about the country’s uranium enrichment program.
“Sure, without question, absolutely,” Trump said Friday during a press briefing when asked if a second wave of bombings was possible.
During his speech, he also addressed the recent American and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, acknowledging that the damage was significant but adding that the regime is still assessing its full extent.
For its part, US intelligence officials have reported that Tehran’s nuclear sites were “severely damaged” during the American airstrikes last weekend.
Araghchi’s comments came as he met on Friday with his counterparts from Britain, France, Germany, and the European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas in Geneva — marking their first meeting since the Iran-Israel war began.
Europe is actively urging Iran to reengage in talks with the White House in an effort to avert any further escalation of tensions.
In a post on X, Araghchi also announced that Iran may reject any requests by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, to visit the country’s nuclear sites.
He said this latest decision was “a direct result of [IAEA Director-General, Rafael Grossi]’s regrettable role in obfuscating the fact that the Agency — a full decade ago — already closed all past issues.”
“Through this malign action, he directly facilitated the adoption of a politically-motivated resolution against Iran by the IAEA BoG [Board of Governors] as well as the unlawful Israeli and US bombings of Iranian nuclear sites,” the Iranian top diplomas said in a post on X.
“In an astounding betrayal of his duties, Grossi has additionally failed to explicitly condemn such blatant violations of IAEA safeguards and its Statute,” Araghchi continued.
The Parliament of Iran has voted for a halt to collaboration with the IAEA until the safety and security of our nuclear activities can be guaranteed.
This is a direct result of @rafaelmgrossi‘s regrettable role in obfuscating the fact that the Agency—a full decade ago—already…
— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) June 27, 2025
Iran’s critique of Grossi comes as the Iranian parliament voted this week to suspend cooperation with the IAEA “until the safety and security of [the country’s] nuclear activities can be guaranteed.”
“The IAEA and its Director-General are fully responsible for this sordid state of affairs,” Araghchi wrote in his post on X.
The post Iran Rejects US Talks, Signals It May Block UN From Nuclear Sites as Trump Leaves Door Open to Future Bombings first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Argentina to Try Iranian, Lebanese Suspects in Absentia Over 1994 AMIA Bombing in Historic Legal Shift
People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas
A federal judge in Argentina has ordered the trial in absentia of ten Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the country’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.
This legal action marks a significant departure from Argentina’s previous stance in the case, under which the Iranian leader was regarded as having diplomatic immunity.
Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.
Thursday’s ruling marks the first time Argentina will try suspects in absentia, following a legal change in March that lifted the requirement for defendants to be physically present in court.
This latest legal move comes amid a renewed push for justice, with President Javier Milei vowing to hold those responsible for the attack accountable.
Among those accused of involvement in the terrorist attack are Ali Fallahijan, Iran’s intelligence and security minister from 1989 to 1997; Ali Akbar Velayati, former foreign minister; Mohsen Rezai, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps between 1993 and 1994; and Hadi Soleimanpour, former Iranian ambassador to Buenos Aires.
Also implicated are former Al Quds commander Ahmad Vahidi; Iranian diplomat Ahmad Reza Asghari; Mohsen Rabbani, the former cultural attaché at Iran’s embassy in Argentina; and Hezbollah operatives Salman Raouf Salman, Abdallah Salman, and Hussein Mounir Mouzannar.
According to Judge Rafecas, the defendants were declared in contempt of court years ago, remain fully informed of their legal standing, and have consistently disregarded multiple extradition requests.
He said that trying the suspects in absentia would give the courts a chance to “at least uncover the truth and piece together what happened.”
This latest decision acknowledges “the material impossibility of securing the defendants’ presence and the nature of the crime against humanity under investigation,” Rafecas said.
“It is essential to proceed … to prevent the perpetuation of impunity,” he continued.
Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.
Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and has refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.
To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terror attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.
In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.
Last year, Argentina’s second-highest court ruled that the 1994 attack in Buenos Aires was “organized, planned, financed, and executed under the direction of the authorities of the Islamic State of Iran, within the framework of Islamic Jihad.” The court also said that the bombing was carried out by Hezbollah terrorists responding to “a political and strategic design” by Iran.
The court additionally ruled that Iran was responsible for the 1992 truck bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 people and injured 200 others.
Judges determined that the bombing of the Israeli Embassy was likely carried out in retaliation for then-President Carlos Menem’s cancellation of three agreements with Iran involving nuclear equipment and technology.
The post Argentina to Try Iranian, Lebanese Suspects in Absentia Over 1994 AMIA Bombing in Historic Legal Shift first appeared on Algemeiner.com.