With elections looming in October, Israel’s right wing is turning the push to rebuild Jewish settlements in Gaza into a defining issue of the campaign. It is part of a broader effort to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into reversing the 2005 disengagement, when Israel unilaterally uprooted its settlements from the coastal enclave.
On Sunday, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, two of the most prominent far-right figures in Netanyahu’s government, led thousands of settlers and activists toward the Gaza perimeter, demanding the reestablishment of three settlements in northern Gaza: Nisanit, Dugit, and Elei Sinai. The demonstration, organized by the hardline Nachala settler movement, drew senior ministers and lawmakers and was far more than a campaign photo opportunity. Expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank and rebuilding them in Gaza has long been an open ambition of Israel’s far-right, and with Israel currently occupying more than half of Gaza, its leaders see this moment as a rare opening to press Netanyahu toward that goal.
The Israel Defense Forces declared the area a closed military zone in an attempt to keep the march from reaching Gaza, forcing organizers to reroute. The marchers pressed on anyway, weaving around barriers set up by the military and police. Buses carried families, including children and teenagers, from settlements in the occupied West Bank, while young activists from Ben Gvir’s and Smotrich’s parties distributed campaign pamphlets along the route.
“If someone had said three years ago that we would control 70% of the Gaza Strip, no one would have believed it,” Ben Gvir told the crowd. “So today I say: there will be Jewish settlement throughout Gaza.” He went further, calling for Israel to “encourage voluntary migration” of Palestinians out of the territory, an idea the Trump administration briefly floated before it was dropped from the final Gaza ceasefire agreement. “We are returning home,” he said. “Gaza is ours.”
Smotrich framed the moment in explicitly political terms, warning that a change in government could unravel what he called the “Zionist and national settlement revolution” of the past four years under the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. “All of this could go down the drain, and we will march here again to prevent evacuations,” he said. Smotrich, who has overseen a dramatic expansion of West Bank settlements during this government’s tenure, shows no sign of slowing that agenda.
Both men have pushed to rebuild Gaza’s settlements since the October 7, 2023 attacks, treating the war as an opportunity to reverse the 2005 withdrawal. Smotrich, who also oversees settlement affairs within the defense ministry, said in June that completed plans for three northern Gaza settlements are already sitting on Netanyahu’s desk awaiting approval. He has called Gaza “an inseparable part of the land of Israel” and argued that renewed settlement would function as a security buffer, saying bluntly in late June: “Where there is no settlement, there is no security.”
Separately, Defense Minister Israel Katz has said he intends to establish three military outposts in the area, a step Israel has historically used as the first stage in building a lasting civilian presence that later expands into full settlements.
Netanyahu himself has neither endorsed nor rejected these plans, which have not been brought before the Israeli cabinet. He currently leads a caretaker government ahead of the October 27 election. Israeli forces now hold an estimated 60% of Gaza’s territory, and Netanyahu has said publicly that he ordered the military to take 70% or more. Under the US-brokered October 2025 ceasefire, Israel was required to withdraw to roughly 53% of the territory, though the IDF has expanded well past that line since. Trump’s Gaza peace plan explicitly ruled out Israeli occupation or annexation of the territory.
Before the 2005 disengagement, Israel maintained 21 settlements across Gaza, home to about 8,000 settlers. Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal dismantled those communities along with four additional settlements in the northern West Bank. In recent years, Netanyahu’s government has chipped away at that legacy, passing legislation allowing Israelis to return to previously evacuated West Bank areas and approving new settlements there. Last week alone, the government approved more than 2.3 billion shekels, roughly $766 million, for new settlements and access roads in the West Bank, part of what critics describe as an accelerating effort to entrench the settlement enterprise and foreclose any future Palestinian state.
All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under international law, though settlers have repeatedly built unauthorized outposts that were later retroactively approved by the government.
The renewed settlement push, layered on top of the prolonged Gaza war and rising settler violence, has sharpened international criticism of Israel. The UK, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway have recently imposed sanctions on groups and individuals tied to the settler movement, and some European countries have imposed travel bans on Ben Gvir and Smotrich themselves.
