{"id":549595,"date":"2026-07-19T22:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T22:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/549595\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T22:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T22:00:08","slug":"israeli-ministers-join-march-to-gaza-to-demand-return-of-settlements-gaza-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/549595\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli ministers join march to Gaza to demand return of settlements | Gaza News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hundreds gather near the border as coalition figures push to rebuild communities evacuated in 2005.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Published On 19 Jul 202619 Jul 2026<\/p>\n

Israeli cabinet members and parliamentarians have joined a march towards Gaza to call for the rebuilding of Jewish settlements in the besieged Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n

The march on Sunday defied a military order that restricted their route at the last minute over concerns that some participants planned to cross the fence into the besieged Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

The rally is the latest sign of how calls to resettle Gaza<\/a> have moved from the political margins into Israel\u2019s mainstream political discourse.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party was listed among the rally\u2019s sponsors, despite his insistence that Gaza will not be resettled<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier, the Israeli army designated the surrounding area a closed military zone for 24 hours, saying it was meant to stop marchers from crossing into Gaza.<\/p>\n

Nachala<\/a>, the settler group behind the event, called it the \u201cMarch of Thousands\u201d and said more than 10,000 attended, although Israeli media reports estimated the crowd at only a few hundred.<\/p>\n

Nachala is led by Daniella Weiss<\/a>, who has long advocated Israel resettling Gaza. Speaking at a Likud party conference, she said Palestinians would \u201cdisappear\u201d from the territory.<\/p>\n

Some marchers bypassed checkpoints through nearby hillsides to reach the Gaza border. Video verified by Al Jazeera\u2019s verification unit showed dozens of Israelis gathered at the border fence.<\/p>\n

Also on the march were Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also oversees settlement affairs, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and more than two dozen ministers and legislators, Israeli media reported.<\/p>\n

Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have been sanctioned by several European countries.<\/p>\n

Marching under the banner \u201creturning home after 21 years,\u201d they demanded the reconstruction of Elei Sinai, Dugit and Nisanit, three settlements evacuated when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ben-Gvir, a member of Netanyahu\u2019s cabinet, posted a video of himself among the marchers with a caption: \u2018Gaza is ours\u2019. Fellow cabinet minister Smotrich also a called on Israelis not to miss a \u201chistoric opportunity\u201d to rebuild settlements in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Palestinian lawyer and analyst Diana Buttu told Al Jazeera that Israel\u2019s settlement drive has been enabled by a lack of accountability.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause Israel has never been punished for its crimes, it\u2019s only natural that a country that commits genocide and ethnic cleansing feels emboldened to steal more land\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n

In December, a group of Nachala activists briefly crossed into Gaza and planted an Israeli flag before soldiers brought them back across the fence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds gather near the border as coalition figures push to rebuild communities evacuated in 2005. Published On 19…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[50,85,46,47,43,48],"class_list":["post-549595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-gaza","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-palestine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549595","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=549595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}