The Minister of the Israeli Occupation Army, Yoav Galant, announced today, Wednesday, in a joint statement with the so-called Chairman of the Settlements Council in the northern West Bank, Yossi Dagan, the start of implementation of what was stipulated in the “Canceling the Disengagement” law from the northern West Bank.

This decision comes in the context of the extremist and angry Israeli reactions to the decision of Spain, Norway and Ireland to recognize the State of Palestine, in order to preserve the right of our people to self-determination on their land, and in an actual step to support the implementation of the two-state solution.

“Disengagement” is a unilateral Israeli plan implemented during the era of the occupation Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005, under which the occupation forces withdrew from the Gaza Strip, in addition to four colonies: “Ganim,” “Kedim,” “Homesh,” and “Sanur.” "), North of the Arab Bank.

On March 21, 2023, the Israeli Knesset approved, in the second and third readings, the cancellation of provisions in the “disengagement” law from the northern West Bank.

The clauses that were canceled after passing the three readings in the Knesset stipulated that settlers were prohibited from entering the four evacuated colonies. The new law now allows their return to these settlements by abolishing the criminal punishment imposed under the “Disengagement” Law on anyone who enters or resides in them.

On the twenty-ninth of the same month, settlers rebuilt a religious school on the site of the evacuated “Homesh” settlement, built on private Palestinian land in the north of the West Bank, along the main road connecting the Nablus and Jenin governorates.

Eighteen years later, the settlers returned to the northern West Bank and with them returned attacks on citizens in the towns and villages on whose lands the “Homesh” settlement was established. They burned homes there, destroyed vehicles, pursued them, and assaulted dozens of its citizens.

These attacks were accompanied by military measures to tighten restrictions on citizens. The occupation forces set up a permanent military point at the entrance to the “Homesh” settlement adjacent to Jenin-Nablus Street, and began harassing citizens, searching their vehicles, and detaining them for long hours, while many of the side roads that farmers were using in the vicinity were closed. Colony.

Today, almost a year after the cancellation of some provisions of the “Disengagement Law,” the Minister of the Occupation Army issued a decision completely canceling the “Disengagement Law” with the northern West Bank, which will facilitate control over the lands on which the four settlements that were dismantled in 2005 were once again built. It facilitates the return of settlers to it, and the seizure of more lands in its vicinity and in the northern West Bank, under the pretext of establishing infrastructure, roads, military towers and barracks, which will be worked on in order to secure and facilitate the entry of settlers into those areas.

Also, transferring the powers of the so-called “Civil Administration” in the West Bank to the mandate of extremist Minister Bezalel Smotrich will help accelerate the return of settlers and give free rein to settlement in that region.

The decision of the Minister of the Occupation Army falls within the framework of the process of annexing the West Bank, immersing it in a huge settlement environment, and turning its north into isolated and scattered islands that are not connected or geographically contiguous, in an Israeli race against time to eliminate any opportunity to materialize the Palestinian state on the ground, in implementation of the principle of the two-state solution and the decisions of legitimacy. International.