Israel’s Settler Right Is Preparing to Annex Gaza

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/08/right-wing-israeli-settlers-annex-gaza/683776/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo

Posted by theatlantic

10 comments

  1. Yair Rosenberg: “After Hamas massacred some 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, the Israeli settler right converged on a plan. In 2005, Israel had uprooted about 8,000 settlers from Gaza, ceding the territory to Palestinian control. Many of the settlers never forgave the state for removing them; now they saw a chance to return. And so while other Israelis mourned, the hard right went to work, methodically building a political movement to retake the Gaza Strip, annex it, and repopulate it with Jewish settlements. As I warned in late 2023, these activists planned on ‘displacing or expelling Palestinians,’ and their dream was ‘“not restricted to the political fringes, and should not be expected to stay there.’” Since then, more than a third of the lawmakers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have joined the cause.

    “The Israeli security establishment opposes this land grab. So do most Israelis, surveys have found for years. That dissent spilled into view last week when thousands of settler activists toured the Israeli border region near Gaza.

    “… But popular opinion may not matter, because Netanyahu is not responsive to popular opinion. The prime minister’s coalition received just 48.4 percent of the vote in Israel’s most recent election, and only came to power thanks to support from far-right anti-Arab parties. Without them, Netanyahu’s government would collapse, and he would have to hold elections that polls show he would lose. In other words, the Israeli leader is beholden precisely to those who aim to annex Gaza and the occupied West Bank.”

    Read more: [https://theatln.tc/FVOTVRUT](https://theatln.tc/FVOTVRUT)

  2. The diplomatic backlash would be way to intense and the security establishment which has already found the war pointless at this point still has enough sway to push back on it.

    The idea of threatening to annex Gaza as part of hostage talks even seems gone.

    Not saying this isn’t impossible, we have been stuck in a war that could have been ended last spring for more than a year since that but currently the dispute is over occupying all of Gaza or not militarily.

  3. Israels FRINGE right has been preparing to do a lot of things since 1948. And Palestinean terrorism only ever makes them stronger.

  4. Honestly, I do not see the value in annexing land that has been throughly ravaged by war. Then again, this entire current war is one shitshow after another and I do not see any solution that satisfies anyone.

  5. It’s kind of inevitable at this point. Even if they don’t, where is the humanity in making the so-called Palestinians to live there? There’s no infrastructure, no power, no water. Any chance Gaza has of being part of any future Palestinian state went out the window in the 1967 war

  6. I have supported the two state solution for this Conflict for decades but frankly, after the events of October 7th I’m not sure if it’s just a pipe dream. At least it’s a pipe dream in 2025 when the entirety of the Palestinian Arab population and every single group that leads them has no desire to accept a Jewish state beside them.

    Until the Palestinians are thoroughly deradicalized akin to how Germans and the Japanese were after World War II I see no way that any Israeli citizen ever agrees to live beside an independent Palestinian state. There will always be the shadow of October 7th hanging over them.

    The only humane way out of this current cycle is the reoccupation of Gaza (and the West Bank too honestly) and Israel to rebuilt its physical infrastructure, take control of its education system and eradicate all terrorist elements inside through police action not military operations.

    Life was better in Gaza between 1967 and 1994 when Israel was the sole administrative authority. Nothing improved in Gaza after Oslo for either peoples.

  7. The settlements are straight out of The Prince, literally a method described by Machiavelli for solidifying control of territory. As if anyone had any doubts about why these people want to build farms or whatever in this particular patch of desert…

  8. If you read what Netanyahu said it’s only to get rid of Hamas and then the ave SA, UAE, Qatar, take over.

    The headlines are all mishearing.

  9. This article has been reposted under so many titles and so many authors constantly since Oct 7 2023. Like within a week we got this rhetoric.

  10. It isn’t as if Hamas can ever be allowed to exist again. Allowing that leads to a rerun in say, five years.

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