Death Toll Nears 25,000 As Israel-Hamas War Marks 100 days
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JERUSALEM — While the war in the Gaza Strip rages in the labyrinth of tunnels burrowed beneath Khan Yunis and in the alleys of the devastated city, another battle is being waged across Israel over the post-war fate of the coastal enclave.
Most visionary, but highly unlikely, is a plan by ultra-nationalist members of the Knesset Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the National Religious Party, and Itamar Ben Gvir, head of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) Party, who recently called for Gaza’s 2.2 million residents to be voluntarily resettled elsewhere.
Congo was cited as a destination for the exodus. U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called the statements by Smotrich and Ben Gvir “inflammatory and irresponsible.”
READ: Amid Ongoing War, Israel’s National Library Opens Its Doors
Egypt is adamantly opposed to allowing the 2 million displaced Gazans to shelter in the Sinai Peninsula, lest Israel prevent the refugees from returning. Similarly, Israel is no more likely to allow them to pass through its territory in order to fly out of Ben-Gurion Airport than it is to resettle those refugees who fled their nearby villages in the 1948 Nakba.
Further limiting options, Israel’s high-tech Erez Crossing at the north end of the Gaza Strip — similar in scale to a massive airport terminal — was destroyed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 rampage in which some 1,200 Israelis and other nationals living in cities and kibbutzim near the Gaza border were massacred.
At the same time, the black market is burgeoning for fixers with links to Egyptian intelligence; they are making a fortune in “fees” extorted from Gazans desperate to exit through the Rafah Crossing at Gaza’s south end. The bribe for being placed at the head of the legal exit list for passage across the Rafah border into Egypt and onto Cairo International Airport has now soared to $10,000.
In the face of the vast human suffering, staggering damage to infrastructure and environmental catastrophe caused by the conflict — which marks its 100th day on Sunday — another controversial post-war scenario is for Israel to rebuild some of the post-1967 Gaza Strip settlements from which it unilaterally withdrew in August 2005.
The forcible evacuation of 8,600 Jewish residents from Gush Katif (the Harvest Bloc) — a cluster of 17 village settlements in the southern Gaza Strip — set the stage for Hamas’ 2007 coup d'état, when it seized power from Mahmoud Abbas’ toothless Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah in the West Bank.
On Dec. 22, a group of settlers held an organizational meeting at the agricultural village of Kfar Maimon near the Gaza Strip demarcation fence to launch their plan to create a beachfront community on the barren dunes at Gaza’s southern edge. The day was symbolic since Asarah b’Tevet (the 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet) is a fast day on the Hebrew calendar marking the date 26 centuries ago when Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon began his six-month siege of Jerusalem, which resulted in the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the downfall of the Kingdom of Judah.
Though Gaza was allocated to the Tribe of Judah in the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Israelites never vanquished their Philistine nemesis who dwelled there and in the cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gat and Ekron. Jewish and Samaritan communities intermittently flourished in the territory of Gaza over many centuries. Shaken by the riots of 1929, the former ended in 1948. In Gaza City’s historic Zaytoun quarter, the Ottoman-style Hammam al-Sammara (the Samaritan bathhouse) bears witness to the ancient Samaritan community that was exiled in 1917 by the Turkish army during the battles of World War I.
Anticipating the difficulties such a South Gaza housing project faces, this writer was unable to attend the organizational meeting of the Oz Chaim garin (nucleus) despite allowing three hours for the 90-minute trip. No trains were running that day on the Tel Aviv-Beer Sheba railroad line that connects Israel’s Gaza periphery cities of Sderot, Netivot and Ofakim. Nor were there early morning buses from Tel Aviv.
Those would-be settlers — who staged a car rally just outside Gaza on Jan. 11 — are encouraged by a report on the news site mako.co.il that Israel’s Parliament will be hosting a conference on Jan. 28 on rebuilding settlements in Gaza “after the war” and will offer precise maps and plans. The news site says that Knesset members and other public figures are expected to speak and thousands of Israelis have already applied to join the settlement nuclei in Gaza.
The organizers of the event stated, “We are working both on the political level and on the practical side towards the moment when they can get on the ground. There is a great demand in the public that the victory of the war includes within it Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.”
Such is the interest in resettling Gush Katif — and the lack of information due to the fog of war and military censorship — that a satirical memo circulated last month by the West Bank real-estate development company Harey Zahav promoting “presale lots” for beachfront homes in Gaza went viral and was mistaken for real news.
The spoof featured building plans for villas transposed onto a photo of a destroyed Gaza neighborhood, with the text reading: “A home on the beach is no dream!” A caption below it said: “We at the Harey Zahav company are working to prepare the groundwork for a return to Gush Katif. Several of our employees have started working on land reclamation, clearing out trash and expelling trespassers. We hope that in the near future, all of the hostages will return home safely, the soldiers will return home and, God willing, to start building in every part of Gush Katif.”
A second post advertised lots on a map of Gaza, dividing it into areas named after the evacuated Gush Katif settlements like “New Netzarim” and “Neve Katif.” It also includes the settlement of “Nova,” named for the Supernova rave targeted by Hamas in the Oct. 7 massacre and “Upper Nova,” which it bills as “a new haredi (ultra-Orthodox) city.”
Such is the interest in Gaza, apart from the daily front-page obituaries of fallen Israel Defense Forces soldiers in Israeli newspapers, that the news became sensational when an IDF soldier recently found a wooden name plaque that had hung on Amiel Yarhi’s front door before his family home in Netzarim was bulldozed by Israel in the 2005 disengagement.
And such is public anger that calls for a spring election are becoming vociferous. Meanwhile, senior ministers among Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing allies have turned on the IDF over its plans to probe the intelligence failures that led to the 10/7 attacks.
Israel’s future may be hurtling backward to the widespread protests over judicial reform that divided the country in the months that preceded Hamas’ devastating surprise attack.
More than 50,000 Israelis have already responded to the Chief Ashkenazi and Sephardi Rabbis’ call for a day of prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem to mark the new moon of Shevat.
The message read: “In light of the call from the Chief Rabbis of Israel, rabbis, and Torah scholars to observe regarding the difficult situation facing the people of Israel, and in response to the current situation affecting the residents of Zion and the healing of the injured in body and soul, a prayer gathering will take place at the Western Wall on Wednesday (January 10, 2024 / Tevet 29, the eve of Rosh Chodesh Shevat, 5784) at 15:30.”
In Judaism, the full moon of Shevat is celebrated as the New Year for trees. Besides the pink-white almond blossoms that mark the beginning of Spring, the blood-red anemones also carpet the fields of the western Negev by the Gaza Strip. Like the poppies in Flanders Field, this year those wildflowers will symbolize the boundless tragedy of war.
The event will be held in the presence of the chief rabbis of Israel, the rabbi of the Western Wall and holy sites, rabbis and public figures to “invoke heavenly mercy upon all of Israel,” the message said.
“During the prayers, selichot will be recited following the Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditions, including chapters from the Yom Kippur Katan prayer and Psalms, as well as prayers for the well-being of IDF soldiers and security forces, and the swift return of the abducted to safety.”
Gil Zohar was born in Toronto and moved to Jerusalem in 1982. He is a journalist writing for The Jerusalem Post, Segula magazine and other publications. He’s also a professional tour guide who likes to weave together the Holy Land’s multiple narratives.