The number of Jewish communities in the Gush Etzion region of Judea doubled under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, regional council head Yaron Rosenthal said on Wednesday.
“Not many people believed it would be possible to establish new communities. Occasionally, individual communities were approved under very specific circumstances. But under this government, the number of communities in Gush Etzion has doubled over the past three years,” Rosenthal told attendees at a ceremony marking the expansion of the town of Gevaot, Israel National News reported.
“The primary credit for this transformation goes, first and foremost, to our friend” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, he added.
The event was attended by hundreds of Gush Etzion residents, as well as Smotrich, who oversees civilian matters in Judea and Samaria as part of his role as a junior minister in the Israeli Defense Ministry.
“We are marking the decision to establish a community here—a large city, with all of its strategic importance for Gush Etzion and for creating territorial continuity in the area,” said Smotrich.
“At the same time, we are also celebrating the approval of a zoning plan, including authorization for more than 800 housing units here,” he stated.
The right-wing minister in his speech paid tribute to Israel Defense Forces Sgt. Maj. (res.) Yossi Hershkovitz, a Gevaot resident who was killed fighting Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip in late 2023.
“We are walking here in his path, and in the path of so many people who sacrificed their lives over the past two and a half years so that we can live here in the hills, in Gush Etzion, in Kiryat Shmona, in Sderot and across the country, and so that we can be here as a free people in our land,” said Smotrich.
The Netanyahu government has led an unprecedented drive to expand Jerusalem’s control of Judea and Samaria, having approved tens of thousands of homes and dozens of new communities in the past three-and-a-half years.
