From the Liveblog of
Friday, October 3, 2025
Settler group builds sukkahs on the Gaza border, demand to spend holiday at site of former Nisanit settlement
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleJeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
Dozens of right-wing settler activists, supported by far-right MK Limor Son Har-Melech, set up an encampment less than a kilometer from the border with northern Gaza, saying they are demanding the government allow them to celebrate the Sukkot holiday on the ruins of the former Gaza settlement of Nisanit.
According to the radical settlement movement Nachala, 11 families from a cadre dubbed “Gaza Pioneers” established the encampment overnight Thursday, together with dozens of settler youths, and erected several Sukkahs, the temporary outdoor huts used during the upcoming holiday of Sukkot.
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 its 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,” says Son Har-Melech.
Nachala Co-Chairman Zvi Elimelech Sharbaf says 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.”
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