“A house on the beach is not a dream!” »: this advertising slogan from a real estate developer resonated like sweet music in the ears of some of the former Israeli settlers in Gaza, evacuated in 2005 and who cherish the dream of returning there after the war.
The developer, Harey Zahav, specializing in construction in settlements in the occupied West Bank, illegal under international law, created controversy by publishing this poster on social networks in mid-December with plans to build houses in Gaza.
“This campaign expresses a desire to return but we have no projects in progress,” the owner of the real estate company, Zeev Epstein, told Channel 13 of Israeli television, in reaction to publications on the Israeli social networks scandalized by its advertising campaign.
If some former inhabitants of the Gaza colonies, evacuated by Israel in 2005, openly express the desire to resettle there one day, no leading Israeli official has spoken since the start of the war with Palestinian Hamas on October 7 a possible return of a Jewish presence in this territory where 2.4 million Palestinians live.
On Wednesday, MP Zvika Foghel, of the far-right Jewish Force party, said in an interview on public radio that Israel should take control of the northern part of the Gaza Strip and establish “a new Jewish colony” there. .
Despite the unilateral withdrawal in 2005, Israel is considered by international law to be the occupying power of the Gaza Strip, a territory conquered during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Hamas took power there in 2007.
“It was paradise”
According to a poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute think tank published at the end of November, 44% of the Israeli Jewish population is in favor of an Israeli “civilian presence” in Gaza after the war.
For Hannah Picard, a 66-year-old Franco-Israeli who lived for 16 years in a colony in this Palestinian territory, “it’s obvious that we are going to come back”.
Along with her family, she was evacuated by the Israeli army in August 2005 along with more than 8,000 other Israelis as part of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to unilaterally withdraw Israeli forces and dismantle settlements.
The ongoing war, “despite the deep tension” that she says she is experiencing, is a prelude to a “return”.
“Deep down, we dream of coming back, because this is our home,” she says in “her temporary home,” an apartment on the 18th floor of a tower at the entrance to Jerusalem.
More than 20,900 people, mostly women, adolescents and children, have been killed in Israeli military operations in Gaza, launched in response to an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7, which killed around 1,140 dead, most of them civilians, according to the latest figures from both sides.
Nostalgic for her home in the former seaside settlement of Shirat Hayam, Ms Picard says “living there was paradise”.
“It was a wonderful place, beautiful but also a place with an ideal life, a paradise,” she remembers, pointing to a photo of her family on the wall in front of their house.
” No doubt “
In Jerusalem, at the Gush Katif museum, named after the former settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip, Oded Mizrahi, one of the officials, is convinced that the return is near.
“Everyone understands that Hamas cannot stay there […]. We have no choice but to govern [à Gaza] and then, I say as a believer, God will force things,” Mr. Mizrahi told AFP.
In the museum, you can see photos, maps, religious objects from the destroyed settlements but also buy souvenirs like small bottles with sand from Gush Katif and books on Jewish history in Gaza, which goes back, according to him , in Antiquity.
You can also buy T-shirts bearing the newly printed “We’re going home” for 35 shekels (about $13 Canadian). Mr Mizrahi says the number of visitors has increased since the start of the war.
“I’m sure we’ll come back, no doubt, but the question is when,” says Hannah Picard.