Mrs Weiss heads a radical settler organisation called Nachala, or homeland. For decades, she has been kickstarting Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, on Palestinian land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Some in the settler movement have cherished the dream - or pipedream - of returning to Gaza since 2005, when Israel ordered a unilateral pullout, 21 settlements were dismantled and about 9,000 settlers were evacuated by the army. (Reporting from Gaza at the time, I saw many who were literally dragged out.)

Many settlers saw all this as a betrayal by the state, and a strategic mistake.

Opinion polls suggest that most Israelis oppose resettling Gaza, and it is not government policy, but since the Hamas attacks on 7 October it is being talked about out loud - by some of the loudest and most extreme voices in Israel’s government.

Mrs Weiss proudly shows me a map of the West Bank with pink dots indicating Jewish settlements. The dots are scattered all over the map, eating away at land where Palestinians hope - or hoped - to build their state.

There are about 700,000 Jewish settlers in these areas now and settler numbers are rising fast.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    83
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Taking land by force and displacing population is against the Geneva Conventions.

    Settlers is an unusual name for war criminals.

    • Gingerailed
      link
      fedilink
      189 months ago

      But if the U.S. and Britain called their war criminals ‘settlers’, why can’t anyone else? :O

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      29 months ago

      Its the BBC. If they call the israelis war criminals they will have to have a deeper closer look at themselves for all their war crimes. This way they were just quirked up settlers.