Smotrich gets 22 settlements legalized in exchange for agreeing to Gaza aid – report

The prime minister’s and the finance minister’s offices deny any connection between the two events.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Finance Minister and head of the Religious Zionist party Bezalel Smotrich received upcoming authorization for 22 settlements in Judea and Samaria in exchange for agreeing to let aid into Gaza, the Maariv newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing a “political source.”

Both the prime minister’s and the finance minister’s offices denied any connection between the two events.

Less than a month ago, Smotrich had told Makor Rishon, the paper most identified with his political and religious beliefs, that “If even one grain of humanitarian aid reaches Hamas, I will leave the government and the Cabinet. I told the prime minister, I do not agree, over my dead body.”

Yet Smotrich was on board when the Cabinet recently authorized restarting the flow of aid, which began on Monday with five trucks entering Gaza allegedly loaded just with baby food and other bare food essentials.

“No aid is reaching Hamas. Anyone who says differently is simply lying,” he claimed in a press conference before the crossing points were opened.

“Reality dictates that a minimum of food and medicine will be allowed in for the Gazan population,” he continued, but vowed that “not a single part of it will get to Hamas.”

Over the last several days, the international community, including the United States, has tremendously increased the pressure on Israel to open the gates to let in aid, believing Hamas claims that the Gazans are facing starvation.

The Cabinet decision was slammed by several members of the coalition.

In what is officially a coincidence, according to the Channel 14 TV broadcaster , Smotrich is currently submitting a plan to authorize 22 settlements in Judea and Samaria.

Thirteen of them are existing villages and farms. Nine are nascent settlements known as outposts, many of which are located at the outermost official boundaries of a village in order to prevent Arabs from trying to illegally seize the land around.

Others are established in places that are considered crucial to the security of the area.

Two of the settlements, Sa-Nur and Homesh, will be reestablished almost exactly two decades after they and two others were dismantled in northern Samaria in the 2005 Disengagement, when Israel unilaterally destroyed a bloc of 17 settlements in the southern Gaza Strip and four more on its northern border, eliminating all Jewish presence in the coastal enclave.

Hamas soon took over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup, and over the years smuggled in and produced vast amounts of weapons and rockets, trained a large armed force, and built a formidable terror infrastructure, including a huge tunnel network, leading directly to its October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel that sparked the ongoing war in the Strip.

Homesh was officially annexed to the Samaria Regional Council in May 2023 and its yeshiva was rebuilt on land legally designated for construction, two months after the Knesset officially repealed the Disengagement Law as it pertained to the northern Samaria villages.

It will now receive official settlement status so that a proper zoning and development plan can be put into place. Sa-Nur has been uninhabited until now.