Israel's Settler Movement Takes Victory Lap As A Sparse Outpost Becomes A Settlement Within A Month Yatziv Settlement

 

 

Celebratory music blasting from loudspeakers mixed with the sounds of construction, almost drowning out calls to prayer from a mosque in the Palestinian town across this West Bank valley. Orthodox Jewish women wearing colorful head coverings and with babies on their hips, shared platters of fresh vegetables as soldiers encircled the hilltop, keeping guard. The scene on Monday reflected the culmination of Israeli settlers’ long campaign to turn this site overlooking the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour into a settlement. Over the years they fended off plans to build a hospital for Palestinian children on the land, always holding to the hope it would one day become theirs. That moment is now, they say. Smotrich goes on settlement spree After two decades of efforts, it took just a month for their new settlement, called “Yatziv,” to go from an unauthorized outpost of a few mobile homes to a fully recognized settlement. Fittingly, the new settlement's name means “stable” in Hebrew. “We are standing stable here in Israel,” Finance Minister and settler leader Bezalel Smotrich told The Associated Press at Monday’s inauguration ceremony. “We’re going to be here forever. We will never establish a Palestinian state here.” With leaders like Smotrich holding key positions in Israel’s government and establishing close ties with the Trump administration, settlers are feeling the wind at their backs. Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank. While most of the world considers the settlements illegal, their impact on the ground is clear, with Palestinians saying the ever-expanding construction hems them in and makes it nearly impossible to establish a viable independent state. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, captured by Israel in 1967, as part of a future state. The attack created an impetus to justify the settlement, settlement council chair, Yaron Rosenthal, told the AP. With the election of Israel’s far-right government in late 2022, Trump’s return to office last year and the November attack, conditions were ripe for settlers to make their move, Rosenthal said.