For an Israeli settlement that has become such a resounding symbol of religious and right-wing politics in the West Bank, Homesh is not much to look at.
Three families live in tarpaulin-covered shelters filled with bunk beds for about 50 young men, who study in a yeshiva that is a squalid prefab structure surrounded by abandoned toys, building materials and trash.
They live here part-time among the rubble and trash of a hilltop settlement demolished in 2005 by the Israeli army and police. It is one of four West Bank settlements dissolved when Israel withdrew all its troops and settlements from Gaza. Israel’s intention at the time, pushed by Washington, was to signal that remote settlements that were too difficult to defend would be entrenched in any future peace deal.
The decision to disband them is now being contested by the most religious and right-wing ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. They are fighting to settle more land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and even remove Palestinians from Gaza to settle there.
Homesh, perched in the hills above Nablus, has become a symbol of their determination.
Early last year, the Israeli government decided to re-legalize Homesh, but the Supreme Court then asked the government to dismantle it once again and ensure that the Palestinians who own the land it is on can safely reach .
Instead, the settlers moved their prefabricated yeshiva to a small patch of what is considered state or public land and are defying the court order, with the strong support of the Shomron Regional Council.
It’s settlements like these that Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowed to expand, announcing plans late last week for 3,000 new homes, “deepening our eternal grip on the entire land of Israel.” The Biden administration immediately reacted, opposing any expansion and calling the existing settlements “incompatible with international law.”
But after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, settlements like Homesh epitomize the shift in thinking among Israelis from the seemingly long-ago days when dialogue with the Palestinians focused on a two-state solution.
The rise of Hamas in Gaza and the deepening religious and rightward shift of Israeli politics have changed this. After October 7, more Israelis not only oppose an independent Palestinian state, but a larger minority favor further settlement expansion, including in reoccupied Gaza.
Emboldened, settlers like those in Homesh see themselves as pioneers, pulling the army in their wake. Today, they are protected (and almost outnumbered) by bored Israeli troops, who say their orders are to keep settlers and local Palestinians apart, to avoid further conflict and bloodshed.
“Our orders are to be a human fence between the two sides,” said one soldier, requesting anonymity to speak without authorization. “We try to keep them separate. we are trying to stop the settlers from going down the hill. And we say to the Palestinians, “You don’t need to be here.”
The effect of the military presence is to keep Palestinians off their land, and the new checkpoints are severely hurting business along Route 60, the main north-south road in the West Bank that runs from Ramallah to Nablus and Jenin.
Homesh’s new settlers believe they are reclaiming land that God gave to the Jews in biblical times and don’t care much what their own government thinks. They are hostile to journalists and have no interest in the beliefs or assets of Palestinians.
Palestinians who live in the villages below Homesh and own most of its land say the settlers are aggressive and violent. Sometimes armed with rifles, the settlers occasionally engaged in house-breaking, sheep-stealing and vandalism. They cut down olive trees, roll burning tires down hills to burn crops and even send wild boars to dig up Palestinian seedlings and fruit trees, locals say.
Salah Qararia, 54, showed visitors the broken windows and doors of his house, on his own land, perhaps 200 meters down the hill from Homesh. Settlers armed with pistols have come frequently, shouting racial slurs and throwing stones, and uprooted some of his 600 fruit trees, he said. So he sent his wife and seven children to stay in the house to guard it, and bought some dogs to keep the wild boars away.
“They are trying to scare us,” Mr Carraria said. “They want to try to take the house and the land.”
Does he complain to the military or the Palestinian Authority, which exercises political control over parts of the West Bank? He laughed. “The PA is powerless here,” he said. As for the military, “you can’t talk to them, you can’t reach them. And they would certainly take their part.”
Mr Qararia and his neighbors have a WhatsApp group to warn each other if settlers approach, he said. “But it’s too dangerous to come help.” The settlers have guns, he said. “We do not.”
He said he had sometimes seen the soldiers trying to hold back the settlers, who were pushing them back. “They don’t listen to the soldiers,” he said.
Most of them came after Mr Netanyahu was re-elected in 2022, he said. They were backed by far-right ministers such as Mr Smotrich, who had long wanted to rebuild Homesh, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister.
“The settlers are seeking to delegitimize the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza,” said Amnon Abramovich, an Israeli commentator for Channel 12. “Why break up the four in the West Bank?” It was a message from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon “that in the coming years he will evacuate many others.”
Like Yitzhak Rabin, Mr. Sharon wanted to stay in the West Bank but bring the outlying settlers into three defensible settlement blocs, removing outposts that stretched the army’s resources, Mr. Abramovich said.
But Mr. Sharon suffered a stroke soon after, and under successive governments, settlement activity accelerated.
Jihad Musa, 46, who sells building materials, is building a house on his land on the hill near Homs. But about eight months ago, 30 settlers with butchers and wire cutters, some with M16 rifles, took all the aluminum windows and doors, stole the water pumps, “and whatever they couldn’t take, they broke, including the marble on me. new staircase,” he said.
He showed a video he said was taken by his store’s security camera showing settlers smashing the windows of a car and a truck. He said he went to Israeli police with the video, which The New York Times could not verify, but the police never called.
He now lives in the city in an old house with water damage, afraid to continue building his new house. “I’m afraid to live there,” he said, fearing for his wife and children.
Asked to comment on Homesh and reports of settler violence, the Israeli military said in a statement that army and police officers, when they “encounter incidents of law-breaking by Israelis, particularly violent incidents or incidents targeting Palestinians and property them, they are required to act to stop the trespass and, if necessary, arrest or detain the suspects until the police arrive at the scene.”
“Any allegation” that the military “supports and enables settler violence is false,” the statement continued. Palestinians can also file a complaint with Israeli police, the statement said.
Ghassan Qararia, head of the Al Fandaqumiya village council, said he had given landowners a tax break “to be stable on the land and build on it, but they are very scared.”
Abdel Fatah Abu Ali, the mayor of nearby Silat Ad-Dhahr, also under Homesh, said that since October 7, Israeli military checkpoints to protect settlers had severely disrupted trade and travel along of route 60.
“I can’t even go to Nablus or Ramallah now,” the mayor said. “I can’t go to Al Aqsa to pray,” referring to the Jerusalem mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. He laughed bitterly. “Settlers blocked the road? No, it was the army protecting them. There is no difference between them.”
Mr. Abu Ali, 65, lived for a time in the United States. “I had a taste of freedom there,” he said. “Here now is the taste of hell.”
The Palestinian Authority was “useless,” he said. “My government is corrupt. It is the Harvard University of corruption.”
The issue of Homesh is increasingly sensitive, even among settlers, who feel they are getting hostile media coverage.
Some members of the Homesh settlement had agreed to talk to me, but when Esther Allouch, the representative of the Shomron Council, heard of my plans to visit, she said she would cooperate only if I provided offers for approval and promised not to include any Palestinians in the my report
I didn’t agree with her terms. Mrs. Allouch then refused to cooperate and discourage others from doing so, telling the settlers there not to invite us in, they said. Only after calling the Israeli commanders did the soldiers agree to let us in.
The students, warned, refused to speak. But Avihoo Ben-Zahav, 26, visiting Homesh from a nearby settlement after doing his army reserve duty, spoke freely.
“We are here because of our love for the whole land of Israel,” he said. “That people were forced to leave this village is a wound that is still bleeding.” Pointing to Tel Aviv in the distance, he said Homesh was “one of the most beautiful and strategic spots in the country.”
“We are here because God gave us this land in the Torah,” he said. “It will be better for the Palestinians if we are secure in our position.”
Local Palestinians vow to preserve what belongs to them.
Salah Kararia, who lives in his vandalized home to protect it, said firmly: “I will never leave the land, even if I die defending it.”
Nathan Odenheimer contributed reporting by Homesh and Shavei Shomron and Rami Nazal from Silat Ad-Dhahr and Al Fandaqumiya.
