![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1411121_5412115_WestBank1_akhbar.jpg\")
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This picture taken from Umm Safa village, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, shows an Israeli flag fluttering on a hilltop overlooking the village on February 16, 2026. \u2014 AFP<\/p>\n
SA NUR, Palestinian Territories: Israeli ministers on Sunday officially reopened Sa-Nur, a settlement in the occupied West Bank that was evacuated 20 years ago, marking the occasion with defiant declarations against Palestinian statehood and calls to resettle Gaza.<\/p>\n
Several cabinet members and lawmakers attended the ceremony near a cluster of white prefabricated homes arranged in rows on a hilltop.<\/p>\n
Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank in settlements that are illegal under international law, among some three million Palestinians.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn this exciting day, we celebrate a historic correction to the criminal expulsion from Northern Samaria,\u201d Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, using the Israeli biblical term for part of the West Bank.<\/p>\n
Sa-Nur\u2019s settlers were evicted in 2005 as part of Israel\u2019s so-called disengagement policy that also saw the country withdraw troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
The policy promoted by then-prime minister Ariel Sharon was framed as a security measure intended to reduce Israel\u2019s civilian and military footprint in densely populated Palestinian areas.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s current government, considered one of the most right-wing in the country\u2019s history, approved the reconstruction of all four northern West Bank settlements evacuated in 2005.<\/p>\n
Authorities have approved 126 housing units in Sa-Nur alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are cancelling the shame of the disengagement, burying the idea of a Palestinian state and returning to the settlement of Sa-Nur,\u201d Smotrich said.<\/p>\n
Smotrich, a far-right minister in the ruling coalition and a settler himself, also called for the resettlement of the Gaza Strip as a \u201csecurity belt\u201d for the State of Israel.<\/p>\n
Israeli media reported that 16 families had moved into the re-established settlement in recent days, adding that the new residents included Yossi Dagan, head of the northern West Bank Settlements Council.<\/p>\n
Dagan was among those evacuated from Sa-Nur in 2005. \u201cFor me, this is both a national and a personal closing of a circle,\u201d Dagan said after cutting the ribbon at the ceremony.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo more uprootings, no more retreats. We have returned to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and since then settlement expansion has been a policy under successive Israeli governments. But it has accelerated significantly under the current coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
More than 100 settlements have been approved since the government came to power in 2022, according to activists and authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This picture taken from Umm Safa village, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, shows an Israeli…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-401027","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}