GAZA BORDER, ISRAEL — A vibrant procession of Israeli flags snakes along a desert road as hundreds of demonstrators, both young and old, march towards the border, expressing their commitment to establish a new Jewish settlement on the remnants of northern Gaza.
Few structures remain following extensive Israeli shelling, with the Mediterranean Sea visible in the distance.
Daniela Weiss, founder of the radical right-wing settler group Nachala, articulates the crowd’s intentions clearly: their goal is to create a new Jewish community in Gaza, a sentiment she shared during an interview at the border in late April.
Weiss emphasized their plans to replicate actions taken in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank, where violence against Palestinians by illegal Jewish outposts and settlers has surged dramatically in recent years.
While the border march was largely symbolic, its implications resonate throughout the Middle East. It highlights the evolution of Weiss and her extremist movement from the fringes of Israeli society to a recognized political force, particularly after the devastating Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,200 people and approximately 250 hostages.
Weiss referred to the October events as a transformative moment, arguing that they vividly illustrated Hamas’s intentions toward Israel. By October 9, 2023, 20 members of the Israeli parliament had signed a letter advocating for complete control of the area as one of the primary objectives of the military conflict, thereby lending momentum to her movement.
According to the United Nations, the Israeli military operations initiated on October 7 displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population and resulted in over 72,500 fatalities, as reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health. In the nearly seven months since the ceasefire, continued Israeli aggressions have claimed another 845 lives.
Today, the vision of the Nachala movement — to transform Gaza into a thriving Jewish community — remains firmly intact. In this vision, there is no place for Palestinians. Weiss asserted that the two million or more Palestinians living in Gaza “will not live here.” She believes their removal could occur swiftly, stating it may take “a week or months” for them to be displaced completely.
Prominent Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti contends that Nachala and similar groups advocate for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. He accused them of rejecting the feasibility of a two-state or a democratic one-state solution, leaving radical factions with the sole objective of fully eliminating the Palestinian presence.
Weiss, along with others holding similar views, enjoys significant backing from high-ranking officials in the Israeli government. Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly opposed Jewish resettlement in Gaza, his administration is characterized as the most right-wing in Israel’s history, featuring several far-right figures, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Smotrich recently declared in a synagogue that Gaza “must become fully Jewish and ours through Israeli settlements,” suggesting that their adversaries should seek opportunities elsewhere.
Despite the growing domestic support for the resettlement movement, it faces widespread international condemnation. In May 2025, the British government imposed sanctions on Weiss, citing her involvement in promoting violence against Palestinians. Reports also indicated that Nachala had been instrumental in supporting illegal outposts and the forced displacement of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Israel.
Similarly, Canada has sanctioned Weiss, while the United States has refrained from taking action against her or Nachala, although it did impose sanctions on four extremist settlers in the West Bank under the Biden administration back in 2024.
Settlements in the West Bank, which are home to approximately 700,000 Jews and around 3 million Palestinians, are deemed illegal according to international law; however, Israel views those established with government approval as legitimate.
In 2005, under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel dismantled between 8,000 and 9,000 settlements in Gaza, reasoning that the costs and defenses were untenable. The scenes of security personnel forcibly evicting settlers have deeply polarized Israeli society. Until recently, the notion of reestablishing settlements in Gaza was largely dismissed as an impractical fantasy of the far-right. Yet, current sentiments suggest that the idea is gaining traction even among more mainstream Israeli populations.
