JERUSALEM: Israelis began moving into the occupied West Bank settlement of Kadim on Thursday, the local settler council said, the last of four communities from which Israel withdrew more than two decades ago to be repopulated.
It came a week after Israel officially reopened neighboring Ganim, in a move emblematic of the current government’s policy of rapid settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The Samaria regional council, which administers Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank, described the return to Kadim as a “historic milestone.”
“At this very moment, the families of the pioneering settler core are moving into Kadim, a community that was uprooted during the disengagement,” it said in a statement.
It said that 30 families were moving to live permanently in the settlement, accompanied on Thursday by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and head of the Samaria regional council, Yossi Dagan.
