Arabs hang Nazi flag outside Jewish settlement in Samaria

Students say Arab harassment has intensified since the Gaza war in May.

By David Hellerman, World Israel News

A group of yeshiva students in northern Samaria were shocked to discover a Nazi flag hung by Palestinians outside the settlement of Homesh on Monday morning.

One side of the flag showed two swastikas while the other side featured a Jewish star above a swastika.

“One hundred meters from the entrance to the settlement, we saw the flag. We stopped the vehicle and lowered it immediately,” one of the students told the Hebrew language Srugim news site.

The yeshiva’s administrator, Shmuel Wendy, told Srugim that since Operation Guardian of the Walls, the 11-day conflict with Hamas in May, Palestinian harassment of the yeshiva students has intensified. “We’ve been experiencing a lot of harassment here and it seems to be a deliberate trend,” he said. Wendy said that Homesh “prevents northern Samaria from becoming a terrorist enclave like Gaza.”

During the Gaza disengagement of 2005, Homesh, along with the northern Samaria settlements of Ganim, Kadim and Sa-Nur were evacuated and dismantled. Since then, settlers have made repeated efforts to revive Homesh. The yeshiva’s students live in the nearby settlement of Shavei Shomron.

Homesh is located in Area C, where Israel has both security and administrative responsibility.

HarassmentSamaria