Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz’s Office clarified on Tuesday that Katz’s remarks regarding the deployment of Nahal units in northern Gaza earlier in the day were made solely in a security context.
“The government has no intention of establishing settlements in the Gaza Strip,” the statement said, adding that the defense minister emphasized that the IDF is Israel’s first and last line of defense.
Katz had announced earlier on Tuesday at an event in Beit El that, “We will establish Nahal ‘cores’ in the northern Gaza Strip when the time comes, at the appropriate time.”
Nahal is a program within the Israel Defense Forces that combines military service with educational and social welfare projects, often involving community building.
Referring to the four communities in the northern Gaza Strip evacuated during the 2005 disengagement, Katz said the government would “correct the injustice” and work with the IDF to protect the new settlement effort.
“We are deep inside Gaza and we will never leave Gaza. No such thing will happen. We are here to defend and to prevent what happened from happening again,” he said.
“This government is a government of settlement. It strives toward its goal. If sovereignty is possible, we will apply sovereignty. We are in a period of ‘practical sovereignty’ now,” he continued.
“And right now, because of the strength and stances that Israel demonstrated after the terrible disaster of Oct. 7, there are opportunities that have not existed for a long time,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly stated he does not support Jewish settlement of the Gaza Strip.
“The issue of settling in Gaza is not realistic,” Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 14 in June 2024, one of many similar comments he has made on the subject.
Katz made his remarks at the signing ceremony of an agreement to evacuate the Binyamin Brigade in Beit El and build on the site of the IDF base, 1,200 housing units. Beit El is located in Judea and Samaria.
Attending the ceremony were Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, Beit El Mayor Shai Alon and other senior officials.
Smotrich, who called at the event for officially securing sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, said “very soon” Israel will “return to settle in the Gaza Strip, too.”
The Yesha Council, an umbrella group which represents the regional councils in Judea and Samaria, praised Katz “on his important announcement regarding the establishment of Nahal cores in the Gaza Strip.
“The uprooting of the settlements and the expulsion of the Jews [in 2005] was a terrible injustice. The settlement in Gaza is the repair. Settlement in the Gaza Strip has always strengthened the security of the south of the country and the entire State of Israel,” the council statement said.
“Now it also makes it clear to the enemy that he is paying for the Oct. 7 massacre with land—and permanently,” it concluded.
