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For weeks people living in northern Gaza, like Dr Mohammad Salha, have been sheltering from a renewed offensive by Israel. Israel has told civilians to leave, and food and humanitarian aid has stopped. Salha is the acting director of the al-Awda hospital – and has stayed behind to treat patients. He says there is only one surgeon left to do life-saving operations in the area, and food, medicines and electricity are vanishingly scarce. He has watched as thousands have fled, including his family. It is not clear when they will be allowed to return or if they ever will.
Yet just over the border from Gaza, one group of far-right Israelis have a plan. Settlers from the Nachala organisation have held a conference in the closed military zone of the strip’s periphery to discuss moving into the Gaza Strip and taking over land there, to build their own homes. The Guardian’s Jerusalem correspondent, Bethan McKernan, was there and said so were members of the Knesset and cabinet ministers. And, she says, while plans to “re-settle” Gaza are at a speculative stage, the presence of politicians showi how the settler movement has grown in importance and power.
Reporter Ruth Michaelson went to visit Nachala’s 79-year-old leader, Daniella Weiss. She met a well-connected woman who has had decades of experience in settling land – and who talked openly about other settlers asking her to sell them plots of land in Gaza to live on.
Bethan tells Michael that while Netanyahu has said he does not want settlements in Gaza, “people in his own party, as well as the far-right elements of the government, his coalition partners have been talking about it like it is going to happen”. She explains how the arrival of Donald Trump could affect this.
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