San Francisco Frontiers - Israelis march between once-closed West Bank settlements

Settlers of all ages carried traditional bundles of fruit and branches used to celebrate the ongoing week-long holiday of Sukkot, or the Feast of the Tabernacles, with inflatable castles and clowns bringing a holiday atmosphere to the hilltop above Palestinian communities.

The settlers walked between Ganim and Kadim, settlements that are powerful symbols for their movement. The Israeli government dismantled them in 2005 under a policy meant to disengage from Palestinian population centres, and they were rebuilt this year under pro-settlement Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The dirt road connecting the settlements was flanked by dozens of uprooted olive trees, a reminder of the Palestinian presence forced out to make way for the settlements.

"Our wonderful people of Israel defeated Oslo," senior settler leader Yossi Dagan told the crowd, referring to the 1990s peace process with the Palestinians.

"Twenty-one years ago, when they uprooted the four communities, the disengagement from land was an attempt at disengagement from an idea, from Zionism," he said.

"Together we will bring hundreds of thousands of Jews to our northern Samaria," he said using the area's biblical name.

Kadim was dotted with Israeli flags and the army deployed to protect the settlers, a stark contrast to the Palestinian city of Jenin, below, where last year Israeli forces killed a number of Palestinians in an offensive.

On the road leading towards Israel, dozens of prefabricated homes were waiting to be installed to expand the settlements and entrench the Israeli hold on the area.

"To be here specifically, and for the holiday, brings me twice as much joy," Yishai Gerstle, 35, told AFP.

Gertsle came with his wife and three children from a city inside Israel, but grew up in a settlement of the northern West Bank and had protested the closing of Ganim as a teenager.

"It's amazing to come back with my kids and show them what we left and where we're going back," he said.

Since Netanyahu returned to power in 2023 leading one of the most right-wing governments in Israeli history, 104 new settlements have been approved in the West Bank, where more than 500,000 settlers now live among three million Palestinians.

Approval of settlements -- all illegal under international law -- has picked up ahead of close-fought elections on October 27 in which Netanyahu is hoping to shore up his base.

Violence has soared in recent months in the West Bank, with settlers attacking Palestinians or their property on a nearly daily basis, and a Palestinian's recent shooting death of a settler.

N.Wilson--SFF