Resettling the Israeli towns that were destroyed as part of the 2005 disengagement from Gaza is the answer to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre and the ICC case against the Jewish state’s leaders, Israeli Construction and Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf said on Thursday.

Writing on X after a visit to the Gaza border with Zionist activist Daniella Weiss, Goldknopf—the head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party—said that “Jewish settlement here is the answer to the terrible [Oct. 7] massacre and to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”

The haredi leader noted that the ICC, “instead of caring for the 101 captives [still held by Hamas after 419 days], chose to issue arrest warrants against the prime minister and the [former] defense minister.”

In the post, Goldknopf shared a picture of himself and Weiss with a map of prospective Jewish communities to be established in the Gaza Strip.

On Nov. 13, Weiss entered the enclave to scout potential locations for Jewish communities on behalf of her Nahala Movement, which works to establish new communities throughout the Land of Israel.

Weiss, known for her leadership in the Gush Emunim movement, has been actively promoting a plan for resettling the Strip. Her organization has prepared six settlement nuclei involving hundreds of families.

She told Kan News last week, “We are no longer waiting for authorization. The moment entry is possible, we enter. We don’t wait for water supply infrastructure, generators or any other preparations. If 300 people enter at once, evacuating them would require 1,000 soldiers.”

In August, Israeli security forces arrested six youths after dozens tried to breach the border to conduct a Jewish morning prayer service in Gaza. The attempt to enter the enclave came as resettlement activists marked 19 years since the military carried out the disengagement from Gaza, in which more than 8,000 Jews were forcibly removed from their homes in the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.

In August 2005, the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally disengaged from Gaza, removing thousands from their homes and transferring them to within the Green Line.

While the move was designed to bring calm to Israel’s southern border, it ushered in a victory for Hamas in January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections. In June 2006, the terrorist organization seized power in the Strip and evicted the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

During its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the northwestern Negev, Hamas murdered some 1,200 people and wounded thousands more. It also took around 250 civilians and soldiers back to Gaza as hostages.

Some 53% of Jewish Israelis support the reestablishment of Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip, according to the “Peace Index” survey released by Tel Aviv University in January of this year.

Five months ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out the possibility of civilians returning to the enclave.

“If you mean resettling Gaza, … it was never in the cards, and I said so openly. And some of my constituents are not happy about it, but that’s my position,” the Israeli leader said in a May 21 interview with CNN.

(JNS)