Settlers return to settlement in northern West Bank evacuated in 2005

More than 20 Israeli Jewish families today returned to Sa-Nur settlement in the northern occupied West Bank, which was evacuated in 2005, local media reported.

The settlers who lived in the illegal Sa-Nur and Homesh settlements entered the area in the early hours of the morning without coordination with the Israeli army, the Times of Israel said, in protest against the evacuation of the settlements.

The paper reported far-right Yamina MK Bezalel Smotrich writing on Twitter: “The resumption of settlement in Sa-Nur is a necessary moral, Zionist and security step.”

Smotrich called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow the Jewish families to stay. “There was no logical reason to destroy the settlement in the first place and there is no logical reason not to allow its reestablishment,” he wrote.

Yossi Dagan, the head of the West Bank Settlement Council, praised the return to the settlement, reportedly saying: “It is the right thing to do after it is clear that there is no person left in the State of Israel who believes that this displacement was correct.”

Despite the fact that staying in these settlements is illegal under Israel’s disengagement law, the occupation army has been preventing Palestinians from entering them.

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