Israelis on Monday erected prefabricated buildings on the grounds of a former Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank that has received international attention for weeks, AFP journalists found. Under heavy protection from the Israeli army, about 2005 young men wearing kippahs participated in this work in Homesh, one of the four West Bank settlements destroyed by Israel in <>, as part of its plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip and an area of the northern West Bank, near Nablus.
Three blocks of prefabricated buildings were placed on Monday, on the heights of an arid hill where a group of settlers had been setting up tents for years, regularly destroyed by the Israeli army. Commenting on the work, Public Security Minister Itamar bin Gvir, a figure of the Israeli far-right and staunch supporter of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, and in particular the reconstruction of Homesh, hailed a "historic and moving moment," according to a statement from his office.
See alsoThe endless battle for the lands of Homesh
In March, the settler movement won an important victory in the Israeli parliament with the passage of a law reversing the ban on Israelis travelling to the Homesh area and other settlements vacated by Israel in 2005. The United States had said the day after the vote to be "extremely concerned" by this decision, in their eyes, "provocative".
While judging that the deputies had annulled "a discriminatory and humiliating law that prohibited Jews from living in areas [being] part of [their] historic homeland", Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had then assured that his government had "no intention of establishing new communities in these areas". ». The entire Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank, occupied since 1967 by Israel, is deemed illegal under international law by the UN.
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Questioned by AFP, the army and the Ministry of Defense did not communicate on these new constructions, while local media claimed that the Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant had authorized the installation of these prefabricated. Shlomo Neeman, chairman of the Yesha Council, one of the main bodies representing settlers in the West Bank, welcomed the "historic" decision in a statement.
