Right-wing activists set up sukkahs on border, seek to spend festival at Gaza settlement ruins

Dozens of right-wing settler activists, supported by a far-right MK, set up an encampment overnight Thursday-Friday, less than a mile from the border with northern Gaza, demanding the government allow them to celebrate the Sukkot holiday on the ruins of the former settlement of Nisanit inside the Strip.

According to the radical settlement movement Nachala, 11 families from a cadre dubbed “Gaza Pioneers” established the encampment, together with dozens of settler youths, and erected several Sukkahs, the temporary outdoor huts used during the upcoming holiday of Sukkot.

Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech and the Nachala movement, which organized the endeavor, also called on the government to “stop the dangerous Trump plan” and “immediately enable Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.”

Nachala has campaigned for the establishment of Jewish settlements inside Gaza since the early months of the war against Hamas, sparked by the Palestinian terror group’s attack inside Israel on October 7, 2023, and has come out strongly against the US-brokered plan for an end to the conflict unveiled earlier this week.

“At this very moment, when a terrible deal is on the table that misses the historic opportunity to right the wrong done in the expulsion [the 2005 Gaza Disengagement] while also ensuring the safety and security of Israeli citizens, and preserving the achievements of the soldiers, I see in the amazing families of the Gaza Pioneers cadre, led by the Nachala movement, the great story of our generation,” Son Har-Melech said.

Nachala Co-Chairman Zvi Elimelech Sharbaf said his organization was “calling on the government to win the war by establishing Jewish settlement throughout the Gaza Strip and not to submit to the Americans’ dictates of surrender,” adding: “Trump’s plan to end the war is a national disaster and will bring upon us another massacre, God forbid.”

Last week, Nachala called the Trump plan for ending the conflict “an awful capitulation,” which “if implemented will bring about the next massacre,” and insisted that “the only victory is the conquest of all of Gaza, the expulsion of the enemy, it has already been proven that all Gazans are the enemy, and Jewish settlement in the entire Gaza strip.”

The movement’s ideology has support in the government. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has called the enclave an “inseparable part” of Israel, and other ministers and lawmakers have been urging the leadership to impose military rule over it and reestablish settlements in the Strip.

Smotrich also slammed Trump’s plan earlier this week, calling it a “resounding diplomatic failure.”

The 20-point plan, unveiled at the White House on Monday, would see all 48 hostages — roughly 20 of whom are believed to be alive — released within 72 hours, and the Strip demilitarized and handed over to a transitional, “technocratic” government. Hamas members who give up their arms would be granted amnesty.

In exchange, Israel will release 250 prisoners serving life sentences; 1,700 Gazans detained after October 7, including all women and children; and 15 bodies of deceased Gazans for every body of an Israeli hostage released.

Aid will then flow into the war-torn enclave, and a process of demilitarizing, de-radicalizing and redeveloping the Strip will begin.

A transitional government of Palestinian technocrats will be established, alongside an international advisory board chaired by Trump and including former UK prime minister Tony Blair. A temporary international security force (ISF) will be deployed to the Strip, which will gradually take over from the IDF as it withdraws.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority will undergo long-demanded reforms until it is determined that the conditions are in place for a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”

The plan does not provide a timeline for this, choosing instead to leave it open-ended.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.