Breakthrough in the Settlement Enterprise: Bet El Is Set to Become a City

After years of delays, the land reserves of the community of Bet El have finally been legally regulated — a move that opens the door for the construction of thousands of housing units.

A dramatic development has taken place in Bet El after a long and complex legal process regarding land ownership and planning was completed. The move removes longstanding restrictions that had blocked large-scale construction projects for years.

As a first stage, plans are already advancing for approximately 1,200 housing units, with the broader vision of transforming Bet El into a city. The project is expected to significantly increase the population of the area.

The expansion also includes major transportation upgrades, particularly widening the access road to the community in preparation for increased traffic and improved accessibility.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed the development, describing it as a “moral and national obligation” and saying the government is continuing to strengthen Jewish presence in the area through building and development.

Local council officials said the move will allow younger generations to remain in Bet El and establish their homes there, while turning the community into a major urban center in the Binyamin region over the coming years.

The Massive Egyptian Threat in Sinai: A Scary Reminder of the Six Day War Exactly 59 Years Ago

by Haggai Huberman, Israeli journalist and author, translated by Hillel Fendel.

We are commemorating this very week 59 years since the Six Day War of 1967 – a miraculous and decisive victory in which we thankfully liberated the areas of Judea, Samaria and Binyamin; the Jordan Valley; the Golan Heights; the Sinai and Gaza Strip – and of course, most historically, the Old City of Jerusalem and the site of the two Holy Temples, the Temple Mount (Har HaBayit).

Six decades is a long time, and we might have forgotten how it all started. It began when Egypt violated the terms of the agreements reached with Israel and the United Nations following the Sinai Campaign of 1956. The Sinai, a part of Egypt, became largely demilitarized, with the UN's Emergency Force (UNEF) stationed there to keep the peace. However, after just ten years, on Israel Independence Day in 1967 (the 5th of Iyar, May 15), Egypt's President Gamal Abdul Nasser streamed his country's army into the Sinai Peninsula. 

The front page of Israel's daily Maariv newspaper blared the alarming development the next day, but added this sub-headline: "Washington is advising Israel not to take the Egyptian show of force seriously.” Three weeks later, it became quite clear how strongly advisable it would have been to take that show of force quite seriously.

Our sweeping victory in the Six Day War obscured the fact that there had actually been an intelligence failure here no less significant than that of the Yom Kippur War. That is, our intelligence leaders evaluated in the months preceding the war that, in the words of one of them, "1967 will not be a year of war." The difference is that then, Egypt's activities were so above-board, and the calls across the entire Arab world for Israel's destruction were so loud, that Israel had no choice but to launch a preemptive counterattack to save the state – but on Yom Kippur we all but ignored the abundance of evidence showing that Egypt and Syria were planning a surprise attack against us, and we did nothing. 

I recall this in light of the reports of the very significant Egyptian violations of our agreements with them going on right now. As reported on Channel 14 a few days ago, the Egyptians have no fewer than 60,000 troops (possibly now up to 70,000), as well as nearly 1,000 tanks and hundreds of artillery units in the Sinai. Very close to our border in the Negev, just 100 meters from Israel, the Egyptians are carrying out training exercises, and have also deployed air defenses.

Not much is left of the Begin-Sadat (Camp David) peace agreement of 1979, but it did have one clear advantage: the demilitarizing of the Sinai Peninsula of all Egyptian forces, except for small forces enumerated in the agreement. Even this advantage, however, has been nearly totally erased in recent years.

The "Netziv" internet site, based on open-source intelligence, reports that elite Egyptian units, advanced weapon stores, infantry and tanks have been detected between El-Arish and the Israeli border 45 kilometers (28 miles) away. Only light-weapons are allowed there, according to the agreements. Underground bunkers have been built in mountain sides, for control and missile storage, Netziv reports, and even the Sinai's airport runways in Rafid and Um-Hashiba have been widened, enabling combat aircraft activity.

The Biggest Threat: Apathy 

Israel appears to be relating to these threatening violations with apathy. The main lesson of the Six Day War, and even more so, of the Yom Kippur War and the Simchat Torah massacre (Oct. 7th), is that the enemy must be evaluated not according to his intentions, but according to his capacities and abilities. And the Egyptian abilities are quite worrisome.

Even assuming that Israel does not wish to enter into war with Egypt at present, Israel must deal with these threats and violations publicly, noisily, and internationally.

First of all, Israel must advance its own armored forces very openly to its border with Egypt. It must also insist publicly that the United States, which is a guarantor to the Camp David Agreements, demand that Egypt remove the forces that violate the accords. Israel must even threaten, in a headlines-grabbing manner, a military response to the violations. 

At present, even more worrisome than the strong Egyptian military presence in the Sinai is Israel's current passive approach.

The Threat Within: When Will the PA Turn its Guns on Judea and Samaria?

by David Alsbang, Spokesman for the Regavim Movement, translated by Hillel Fendel.

An ordinary morning on the roads of Judea and Samaria (Yesha): A white Palestinian Authority police jeep passes by an IDF checkpoint, the officers exchange a nod with the soldier at the post, and go along their way. To the naked eye, this is a picture of the effective and serene “security coordination” between the IDF and the PA. But behind the pressed uniforms and the old promises of the Oslo Accords lies a completely different reality: the reality of a Palestinian Authority army in the making, armed from head to toe, well-trained, and waiting for the signal to “turn its guns around.”

Thirty years have passed since the famous White House lawn handshakes and the launching of the Oslo Accords. The agreements were clear: The PA would have a limited civilian police force, armed with light weapons with which to preserve public safety in the PA cities. Perhaps slightly less formally, it was also designed to solve internal issues "without the Supreme Court and without [the left-wing civil rights organization] B'Tzelem," as then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin said.

However, that's not quite the situation today. A new, disconcerting study by the Regavim Movement – which focuses on land use, construction, and Israeli state policy, particularly in Judea, Samaria, the Negev and the Galilee – reveals that the small police force has grown tremendously both in numbers and in military capabilities. Instead of the agreed-upon 12,000 policemen, we now see at least five times (!) that number, including in the paramilitary National Security, Preventive Security, General Intelligence, and Presidential Guard forces.

This is far from a civilian guard corps; it is on the scale of military divisions in every sense.   

The threat this presents is not just in numbers, but of course also in the quality and mindset of the PA forces. In the past we thought of the PA policemen as directing traffic in Ramallah and Shechem, but today we know their elite units are training for the bona-fide capture of military targets. Neither the commando units like “101” (yes, the name is not coincidental; this was Arik Sharon's special commando unit), which specializes in night warfare and raids, nor its fast motorcycle unit, are intended for fighting local crime. The same applies to the Jericho police training for parachuting, guerilla warfare, and the like, in places such as Russia and Pakistan.

And what of their hateful ideology of those holding and aiming the guns? It is no less dangerous than their military capabilities. In the PA's Al-Istiqlal University in Jericho – which offers academic degrees as it trains students in practical warfare – the students aren't exactly dreaming of "compromise" with Israel. On the official social media accounts of the military training wing, videos are posted under the heading “Blessed Friday” pining not for Bethlehem or Ramallah in Yesha, but for Haifa and Jaffa. Their uniforms signify for them only a temporary status until they can realize the ultimate goal of the “right of return” by force. The PA forces have formulated a clear military doctrine that sanctifies battle as a legitimate tool for eliminating the "occupation" from the river to the sea.

The ongoing security coordination with Israel is basically for the purpose of guaranteeing the flow of money to the PA. Last year's declaration by PA chief Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) of the end of the "pay for slay" program – by which terrorists, or their surviving families, receive life-long salaries for their murderous actions – is basically a sham. A U.S. State Department report presented to Congress states categorically that these PA payments have not at all stopped. Hundreds of millions of dollars are paid out via a "Welfare Authority" that was established specifically to provide funding to terrorists and their families.

A PA policeman knows with confidence that the day he decides to "reverse his gun" and shoot Israeli civilians or soldiers, he and his family will have no more financial worries throughout their lives. Together with the murderous ideology he has been taught since childhood, this is the type of motivation in the back of the mind of every future enemy PA policeman/terrorist.

The writing has long been not just on the wall, but is already engraved in blood. Over the past five years, more than 110 cases have been documented of PA policemen setting out to perpetrate terrorism against Jews. They are invariably killed in the process, leading to ceremonious, PA-sponsored military funerals and the naming of schools and streets for them so that their "heroism" can be remembered by future generations.

The State of Israel has absolutely no choice but to finally awaken from its self-imposed captivity to the false conceptions of "security coordination" and imaginary quiet on the PA front. The assumption that someone else will do the security work for us has proven historically dangerous time after time. The reversal of the guns is no theoretical danger; it has happened in the past, and is simmering in the present. We do not enjoy the privilege of treating a potential ideological enemy of myriads of well-trained and well-equipped soldiers as a far-off scenario.

The question is not whether the threat exists, but when we will wake up to it.

Translator's note: The IDF's large-scale operations against terrorist infrastructures in Jenin and elsewhere, beginning in January 2025 with Operation Iron Wall, saw great success in degrading terrorist capabilities in Yesha – but these had nothing to do with the potential threat from the PA police. In fact, PA security forces actually took part in a small number of battles, and the IDF even briefly considered handing over some of these terrorist areas to PA police control. This precisely supports the premise of this article, which is that the IDF is not taking the threat from the PA police forces themselves sufficiently seriously.

Northern Shomron – Finally, After 60 Years!

by Haggai Huberman, Israeli journalist and author, translated by Hillel Fendel.

There has been much excitement around the rebuilding and resettling of the communities Sa-Nur and Homesh in recent weeks – two of the four Shomron sites that were evacuated and destroyed during the Disengagement withdrawal/expulsion from Gush Katif in 1995. But in truth, the governmental decision to renew the other two communities as well – Ganim and Kadim – is actually even more meaningful in many ways.

This is because their rebuilding is not only an erasure of the disgrace of the expulsion and destruction, but also marks a genuine and unprecedented revolution in the Yesha settlement enterprise.

The reason is that over Ganim and Kadim always hovered a large question mark regarding their viability as full-fledged communities. This was mainly because of the relative isolation from other Jewish areas. This is in stark contrast to Homesh and Sa-Nur, which were located on a route connecting Shavei Shomron and Kedumim to Mevo Dotan and other Jewish towns. The nearest city to Ganim and Kadim was Afula - not a quality municipality on which to base peripheral settlement. Compare this to the settlements in Binyamin and Gush Etzion, whose base city is Jerusalem, and those in western Shomron, which relied on cities such as Petah Tikva and Kfar Saba.

Overall, the assumption even before the Disengagement, given the above as well as their weak social fabric, was that there was little or no chance that Ganim and Kadim could survive.

Lost History?
In general, until just recently, the relatively sparse Jewish presence in northern Shomron belied its glorious history as the launching point for significant Jewish settlement in modern-day Yesha. For instance, the entire liberation of Judea and Samaria in the Six Day War began precisely in the Jenin area, near the Dotan Valley battle, and then moved southward. In addition, the historic agreement between the Israeli government and the Gush Emunim movement for the establishment of Elon Moreh took place in Sebastia, near today's Shavei Shomron.

Yet, throughout recent decades, the Shomron has proven to be a particularly “hard nut to crack” in terms of Jewish presence and control. Barely ten settlements were established there, and they were widely spaced from one another, and struggled to establish themselves.

In 1979, when Ariel Sharon, serving as chairman of the Ministerial Committee for Settlement Affairs, prepared his “Annual Plan for Settlement in Yesha and the Golan Heights” (the first, and last, time a government body prepared a comprehensive settlement plan for the liberated areas), he planned two small settlement blocs in northern Samaria: the Shavei Shomron bloc, which ended up with three communities, and the Shaked bloc, including some six settlements, as well as the city of Harish in recent years.

Ganim and Kadim were planned much later, in the framework of another Sharon plan, this time when he was Defense Minister. (This was all before he instigated the Disengagement, of course.) Still, while the Menachem Begin governments did good work in building massively in Binyamin, southern and central Shomron, and the Har Hevron area, the northern Shomron still waited in the shadows.

Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir, even more unabashedly nationalistic in the top job than his former mentor and predecessor Begin, committed to establish more Yesha settlements and expand the existing ones. However, he did only the latter, because of American intervention and other political pressures following the Madrid Conference in late 1991 – and the northern Shomron once again remained desolate of major Jewish presence.

The Prophetic Warning of Avraham Shvut

Years before the Disengagement, in October 1991, Mr. Avraham Shvut, serving as head of the Planning and Construction Department in the Shomron Regional Council, prepared a comprehensive settlement plan for the northern Shomron. In his accompanying letter to the plan, Shvut wrote words that were truly prophetic:

"Northern Shomron takes up approximately a quarter of all of Judea and Samaria. Its topography is very advantageous, and it is a connecting link both between the Galilee and southern Israel and between the Coastal Plane and the Jordan Valley. Yet, despite its great settlement potential, its Jewish presence, especially in north-eastern Shomron, is most sparse. If there is any place left where an Arab political entity could possibly arise without Jewish presence, it is the northern Shomron, centered around Sh'chem [Nablus]."

"It is clear," concluded Shvut, "that this situation cannot be allowed to continue, and we must rectify it immediately."

This warning was ultimately very much realized, in that the Oslo Agreements of the early 1990's placed most of northern Shomron - the triangle between the cities of Tulkarm, Nablus, and Jenin - under Palestinian Authority control, except for thin transportation corridors between the isolated settlements.

Over a decade later, when Sharon decided to include four Jewish communities from the Shomron in his Disengagement/destruction plan, he chose the most isolated settlements he could find, in order to enable exactly the PA continuity that Shvut had warned about.

In fact, Shvut’s warning about enabling the formation of the “core of a Palestinian state” in northern Shomron was fulfilled almost entirely.

Better Late Than Never

Now, however, the government of Israel is working to rectify this critical mistake. This month, a day after the official ceremony marking the rebuilding of Sa-Nur, a high-level meeting took place not far from there, in the Shavei Shomron home of Shomron head Yossi Dagan.

In attendance were Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, Minister Betzalel Smotrich, Housing Minister Chaim Katz, and Amanah Settlement Organization head Ze'ev Hever. We can sum up the meeting by saying that if everything they discussed comes to fruition, much of the northern Shomron will come to life, with new communities, infrastructures, roads and more.

The historic northern Shomron news we heard this week - that 21 years after they were uprooted in the Disengagement, Ganim and Kadim are expected to be rebuilt this coming summer - is an important stage in the overall plan. When it happens, it will thwart the danger of the establishment of a Palestinian state in its largest potential area: northern Samaria. This will happen because of the creation, for the first time in history, a substantial Jewish presence there – beginning in and around the nearly-forsaken communities of Kadim and Ganim.

New Hamas Atrocities—Against Gazan Women

by Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of more than 20 books about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust.

Women pressured by government officials to have sex in exchange for food rations. Widows molested and intimidated. Young girls sold off into forced marriages.

     If it was happening in Texas or Indiana, or Paris or Rome, women’s rights groups, media pundits, and human rights advocates would be shouting from the rooftops.

     The reason you haven’t heard about it is because it’s happening in the parts of Gaza that are still ruled by Hamas.

     The London Daily Mail has published an extraordinary account, based on video testimony from Jusoor News, of systemic abuse of Gazan women by Hamas. So far, other major international news media outlets are ignoring the story.

     A Gazan man described to Jusoor News (a Middle Eastern NGO) how “he found a widow displaced in the war being molested inside a tent in the Gharabli area by a bunch of Hamas members.” Concerned citizens who alerted Hamas leaders about it “were told we had to keep silent about it.”

     Another Gazan man recounted that one of his neighbors “was blackmailed by one of Hamas’s charity organisations… they wanted her to whore herself in exchange for a food parcel, or an aid voucher…”

     A Jusoor correspondent explained to the Daily Mail that “widows and divorced women” are in particular danger, “because they have no support and no income—their vulnerability is taken advantage of, and the situation is getting worse day by day.”

     A Gazan mother of four described asking for food rations from an official at a charity organization “who looked religious, like a sheikh.” He demanded sexual favors in exchange for the food.

     “I asked him how he could talk to me like that,” she recalled. “I told him I would expose him. He said: ‘You cannot expose me, I am the government here’.”

     Meanwhile, at least 400 Gazan girls aged 14 to 16 registered as married during just four months in 2025, but “this likely represents only a fraction of the true scale,” the article noted.

     The Daily Mail contacted the “UN Women” organization. It declined to comment.

     The silence of UN Women is consistent with the silence of the rest of the international community.

     There are no tent encampments on college campuses to protest the mass sexual abuse of women in Gaza by Hamas. No swarming of Grand Central Station or the Golden Gate Bridge. No heckling of public officials. No waving of hands drenched in red paint.

    Why the silence?

     Perhaps for the same reason that all the people who have been yelling “Free Gaza” recently were mysteriously silent when Gazans suffered under the fascist rule of Hamas from 2007 to 2023.

     Some of the protesters never really cared about Gaza—they were uninformed students who just wanted to do “what the cool kids are doing.”

     Some of the “Free Gaza” crowd are just cause-of-the-month extremists who drift from protest to protest. They did all they can to smear Israel, and now they’ve moved on.

     Some of them are even more cynical—they’re worried that telling the truth about Hamas will undermine their agenda of trying to get Israel to leave Gaza entirely.

     And for some, well, it may be impolite to say it, but it seems that they only yell about Gaza when they can yell at Israel because they just don’t like Jews.