From the Liveblog of
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Families move into rebuilt West Bank settlement of Ganim
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Families moved into the rebuilt West Bank settlement of Ganim this morning, 21 years after the 2005 Disengagement, and some three years after the government passed legislation annulling parts of the 2005 law under which Ganim and three other settlements in the northern West Bank were dismantled.
Several caravans have been placed in the reestablished community.
“Twenty-one years after the terrible sin of the expulsion from [Gaza’s] Gush Katif and northern Samaria, we are finally erasing the disgrace of the expulsion from northern Samaria,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says, using the biblical name for the northern West Bank.
“This morning, we once again went up to the community of Ganim, one of the four communities that were evacuated,” he says, thanking “the members of the nucleus who are going up to resettle northern Samaria.”
About a hundred people attend the ceremony, including Defense Minister Israel Katz and Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council.
“Here, this is the Land of Israel. Here, we are staying forever,” Katz says at the ceremony, after arriving by helicopter.
“The era of evacuation is over — from here, we only build,” Dagan says.
In the valley below, Palestinians tell AFP they fear Ganim’s construction will make their lives harder, or even mean displacement in the long run.
The Times of Israel Community.