Israeli settlers return to West Bank settlement after 20-year ban
Thirty pioneer families have moved back to Kadim settlement in occupied West Bank, marking reversal of 2005 evacuation as Israel accelerates settlement expansion.
By Adam Makins · 
By Adam Makins · A New Chapter in West Bank Conflict
Thirty Israeli settler families arrived at the Kadim settlement in the occupied West Bank this week, marking a significant shift in regional policy. The families, traveling from Tel Aviv in small convoys with Israeli flags, represent the first major resettlement effort in two decades following the 2005 evacuation that saw four northern West Bank settlements dismantled as part of Israel’s Disengagement Plan.
The return was celebrated at a national ceremony attended by senior Israeli political figures, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who framed the resettlement as correcting what he called the “crime of expulsion.” The atmosphere reflected a broader wave of Jewish nationalism driving Israel’s current government agenda.
Systematic Expansion and Palestinian Displacement
Kadim’s reopening represents just one piece of a much larger puzzle. Since taking power in late 2022, Israel’s government has approved over 100 new settlements across the West Bank, with 19 specifically in the northern region around Jenin. The pace feels deliberate, timed before October elections that will shape the country’s future direction.
For Palestinians living adjacent to these new settlements, the situation has become increasingly dire. White trailer homes now dot hilltops where Palestinian farmers have worked their land for generations. Teacher Samer Jaber, who lives near the newly opened Emek Dotan settlement, described a campaign of intimidation that began before families even moved in: filming through windows at night, shining powerful floodlights at three in the morning, attempting to enter homes.
“Fear dominates everything,” Jaber told journalists. “We are completely defenceless.”
The physical infrastructure tells its own story. Beyond new settlements, two military bases are under rapid construction with concrete walls, watchtowers, and barbed wire. Most troubling is a military outpost being built on seized Palestinian land beside Jenin Refugee Camp, the first Israeli military installation constructed on land under full Palestinian Authority control since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The Economics of Occupation
Palestinian businesses have borne the brunt of this expansion. A café road that once served the community is now rubble, demolished along with dozens of shops. A farmer who witnessed Kadim’s original construction in the 1990s, then its evacuation in 2005, now faces a heartbreaking return to uncertainty.
“Back then, the settlers were living alongside us, and we coexisted peacefully,” he reflected. Yet he also described how settlers drove his nephews away from vegetable and citrus groves with threats. “There’s no more displacement left in me,” he said quietly. “We’re living with a sense of resignation. It’s a life of fear.”
This isn’t random development. Peace Now’s Settlement Watch programme confirms that rapid construction around Jenin appears coordinated with the election calendar, as though each new caravan and demolished Palestinian building represents a campaign promise kept to Israel’s right-wing coalition partners.
International pressure has proven ineffective. Palestinian Authority Governor Kamal Abu al-Rub described two decades without settlers as “bliss” compared to what he calls “the hell orchestrated by them.” He fears the pattern in Hebron and Jerusalem is being replicated: settlers strategically positioned to divide Palestinian cities and restrict movement.
One schoolteacher’s analysis, born from frustration, cut through diplomatic language: “Europe has no time for us, America is preoccupied with Iran, China has no interest. Russia is busy with Ukraine, the United Nations is finished, and the Arab countries have their own internal problems. Democratic systems are over, they’re finished.”
Whether that pessimism is justified or exaggerated remains an open question. What’s undeniable is that for Palestinians near Jenin, the international community’s attention has turned elsewhere precisely when their future hangs in the balance.
Source: BBC