Photo Credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90
In 2009, then Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon visits the evacuated settlement of Chomesh in Samaria, and urged Israel to consider resettling the residents, calling it a strategic asset in the face of Palestinian terrorism. Now his Defense ministry is inviting the Arabs to occupy those lands.

An announcement of the attorney general for the IDF Judea and Samaria Division, in response to a suit by extreme left wing group “Yesh Din,” on behalf of land owners from the nearby Arab village of Burka, it turns out that the IDF intends to permit Palestinians to settle the lands of the deserted Jewish village of Chomesh.

Chomesh, located in the heart of Samaria, north-west of Sh’chem, was part of the 2005 “Disengagement” plan, which focused mostly on Jewish families in the Gaza strip. The Jewish residents of Chomesh, 70 families altogether, were evicted by force and the structures were demolished by Israel. Since then the site has seen many attempts on the part of former residents to return home, which are thwarted, occasionally brutally, by police.

Advertisement




Now the village of Chomesh has been officially removed from the list of the Samaria regional council, following which the IDF has revoked the order prohibiting all access to the site. The result is that Arabs will now be free to take over the lands, as well as the infrastructure, while Jews will continue to be prohibited from even going there, based on the disengagement law.

The head of the Samaria regional council, Gershon Mesika, said that “the State of Israel is proving once again that it is first and foremost in hurting its own citizens and their rights.

The head of the Samaria settlers committee, Benny Katzover, said that “the current takeover by attorneys of the Israeli government system is damaging the Jewish character of the state. It cannot be that a group of attorneys would decide to transfer lands in Eretz Israel to the enemy and no one is objecting.”

Ktazover vowed that “Chomesh is a Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel and we will once again settle it, despite the attorney general’s decision which contradicts Jewish logic and the vision of the return to Zion.”

Advertisement

SHARE
Previous articleParallels: Obama Appeasement and British Intelligence Files on Hitler
Next articleAustralian Jews Plan Rally to Protest Falk Visit
Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.