Almost 20 years after Kipa News reporter Amiel Yarchi was evacuated from his home in Netzarim during the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Israel Defense Forces soldiers in Gaza retrieved the name plaque that was on the house, Kipa reported.
“We are left speechless,” Yarchi tweeted on Tuesday. “This morning, an officer of a special unit fighting in Gaza found the sign of our house in Netzarim, the sign that we regretted having left behind.”
Yarchi subsequently shared a picture taken in the year 2000 showing the wooden sign on their house in Gush Katif.
The journalist said Palestinians stole the sign after Israel left the coastal enclave 19 years ago. The placard was reportedly found in the heart of the Strip.
והנה אני לפני 24 שנים ליד השלט של הבית שלנו בנצרים, שעכשיו נמצא אי שם בעזה pic.twitter.com/ru0916FXxP
— עמיאל ירחי (@amiel_y) January 9, 2024
In the summer of 2005, the Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, unilaterally disengaged from Gaza, removing thousands of Israeli residents from their homes and transferring them to Israeli territory.
While the move was designed to bring calm to Israel’s southern border, it ushered in a sweeping victory for Hamas in the January 2006 elections. Within a year and half, Hamas had seized total power in the Strip and evicted the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.
In September of last year, Palestinian terrorist organizations fired rockets toward the Mediterranean Sea as they marked 18 years since Israel’s “defeat” and the uprooting of Gaza’s Jewish communities.
The Hamas-led Joint Operations Room, which includes a dozen U.S.-designated terror groups that coordinate attacks on the Jewish state, said the rocket-fire was part of a military exercise that also included guerrilla warfare simulations.
“The defeat of the occupation from Gaza establishes its defeat from [Judea and Samaria] and heralds the liberation of Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem and the rest of the country, inshallah [God-willing],” said Muhammad Deif, head of Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
During its Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, Hamas murdered some 1,200 Israelis and wounded thousands more. It also took roughly 240 civilians and IDF soldiers back to Gaza as hostages.
