Almost twenty-one years to the day after Israel evacuated settlements in the northern West Bank as part of the 2005 disengagement, families returned to the former community of Ganim on Thursday, formally reestablishing the settlement.

Join our WhatsApp group

Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email

The move follows a recent Cabinet decision to legalize dozens of settlements and comes as Israel advances plans to reverse parts of the disengagement in the northern West Bank.

Dozens of mobile homes were brought to the site to accommodate the returning families, while a branch of the Bnei David educational institutions (a subsidiary of the Eli pre-military academy) was established there.

The return to Ganim is part of a broader effort to reestablish the four communities evacuated from the northern West Bank in 2005. Homesh and Sa-Nur are also being resettled, while Kadim is expected to be reestablished in the near future. If completed, the moves would effectively reverse the northern West Bank component of the disengagement.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attended the ceremony at Ganim and described the return as the correction of what he called a historic injustice.

“Twenty-one years after the terrible sin of the expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria, we are finally erasing the disgrace of the expulsion from northern Samaria,” Smotrich said.

He thanked the Bnei David institutions in Eli and the rabbis and activists involved in the effort, as well as the families returning to the area.

Smotrich also announced plans for further settlement activity across Samaria, saying that 11 new communities would be established this summer, with plans ultimately calling for 18 communities.

“Instead of the four [evacuated communities], there will be 18 communities, 11 of them immediately, including Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim and Kadim,” he said. “And there is more to come.”

The finance minister portrayed the move as having strategic as well as ideological significance, arguing that Jewish communities in northern Samaria provide a security buffer for central and northern Israel.

“Samaria is ours,” Smotrich, who lives in the region, stressed. “It is an inseparable part of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel , the security belt of the State of Israel.” 

“When we are in Ganim, there is security in Afula, Harish and Hadera,” he added, arguing that strengthening Israeli communities in the West Bank would help protect communities inside Israel.

Smotrich said the government’s settlement policy was also intended to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“We are strengthening the security belt, killing the idea of a Palestinian state and making clear that the Land of Israel is ours forever,” he said.

He also used the occasion to attack potential political opponents, warning that a future government led by opposition figures Gadi Eisenkot, Avigdor Liberman and Yair Golan would, in his view, reverse the current settlement policy.

Such a government, Smotrich claimed, would evacuate the newly established communities and “return us to the dangerous Oslo path” of establishing a Palestinian state.

He called on the national-religious camp to remain in control of the government, with Religious Zionism serving as a central force in shaping settlement and security policy.

The reestablishment of Ganim comes amid heightened tensions surrounding Israeli settlement activity and violence in Samaria. The move also follows a recent four-day blockade imposed by extremist Israeli activists on the Palestinian village of Qusra, an incident that drew international condemnation.

The Qusra confrontation prompted criticism from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, which demanded explanations from the Israeli government. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also condemned the rioters, referring to them as “Israeli terrorists.”

The return to Ganim therefore marks not only a symbolic reversal of the 2005 disengagement but also another significant step in the government’s broader effort to expand and legalize Jewish communities throughout the West Bank.