US ambassador denounces settler siege as Israel dispatches troops

BOOSTING SETTLEMENTS

The army’s pursuit of the settlers comes on the same day that a number of Israeli officials, including Defence Minister Israel Katz, were celebrating the reopening of another settlement at Ganim in the northern West Bank.

The settlement had been dismantled more than 20 years ago as part of a disengagement plan by the then government which wanted to reduce friction by leaving densely populated Palestinian areas.

Israel at the time also pulled troops and settlers from Gaza, where Hamas took control.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government gave the green light to rebuild the settlement as it seeks to appeal to his hard-right base ahead of Oct 27 elections, which polls show are looking tight.

The US criticism of the siege is especially striking coming from Huckabee, an evangelical Christian pastor who in the past has embraced Jewish settlement in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, and rejected the idea of a Palestinian state.

Oded Revivi, the former head of the council in Efrat, a settlement near Jerusalem whose population is considered more moderate, said it was impossible to “slap a leftist label on Ambassador Huckabee, the greatest friend of the settlement enterprise in the US”.

“If a true friend like Huckabee has to bang on the table, then all of us need to stop and ask how it happened that we lost our way, and fix it immediately,” he said.

Violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank has increased dramatically since the Oct 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas from the Gaza Strip.

More than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law, among some three million Palestinians in the territory.