Far-right minister extols ‘miracle period’ of settlement expansion
Orit Strock tells residents of recently legalized outpost that land appropriation still in the cards for as long as the government stands, a time period that’s ‘completely unclear’
Settlement and National Projects Minister Orit Strock told residents of a newly recognized West Bank settlement on Saturday night that she was delighted by the “miracle period” of settlement expansion ushered in by the government, but that she was unsure how long it would last.
Army Radio on Sunday tweeted a video of Strock, of the far-right Religious Zionism party, making the comments in a chat with settlers from the Hebron Hills-area outpost Givat Hanan, which Israel legalized in the past week along with two other settlements. The move, which came together with Israel’s largest land appropriation in the West Bank since the 1993 Oslo Accords, followed the legalization of five other outposts in the disputed territory.
While the international community considers all settlements illegal, Israel differentiates between settlement homes built and permitted by the Defense Ministry on land owned by the state, and illegal outposts built without the necessary permits, often on private Palestinian land. In recent years, though, the government has increasingly sought to regulate the wildcat outposts, rather than demolish them.
Speaking to Givat Hanan residents, Strock waxed lyrical about “what we’ve accomplished just in the past several months,” adding that “the hand is still outstretched” for land appropriation as long as the government, “with God’s help,” still stood.
“And it’s unclear that it will stay standing, completely unclear,” Strock added.
Nonetheless, she said, “from my point of view, this is like a miracle period.
“I feel like someone standing at a traffic light, and then it turns green,” she told the settlers.
“We want to accomplish as much as possible, in the Land of Israel at large, and as much as we can in the Hebron Hills specifically,” added Strock, referring to the southern West Bank region that serves as the patriarchs’ backdrop in the Hebrew Bible.
“In my eyes, it’s really a sacred task,” she concluded.
Strock’s assessment of the “miracle period” raised some eyebrows given the war in Gaza and tens of thousands of Israelis who have been displaced from their homes in the north and in the south.
Strock’s office responded in a statement that she was focused on “strengthening settlement in areas where our enemies are making a greater effort to harm it.”
“After decades in which the Palestinian Authority has invested more in the Hebron Hills than Israeli governments have, we are blessed that the government is developing this strategic area,” the statement said, adding that Strock was also tending to the displaced Israelis.
Strock, herself a settler from Hebron, had previously come under fire for reportedly saying, “First of all, happy holiday” as the government convened on October 7, which coincided with Simchat Torah, as thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of Strock’s party, is virulently opposed to the PA, and has advocated annexing the West Bank as a punitive measure against what he describes as Ramallah’s actions against Israel, most recently at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Speaking to reporters in the Knesset last Monday, Smotrich — who believes that a Palestinian state poses “an immediate, existential danger to the State of Israel” — said that he was working to “remove [such a state] from the agenda by establishing facts on the ground.”
Israel has controlled the West Bank since conquering it in the Six Day War in 1967. The country has not annexed the territory.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.
