KADIM: Hundreds of Israelis marched on Wednesday between newly rebuilt settlements in the northern West Bank to celebrate a Jewish holiday, a symbolic show of their return to an area until recently almost fully Palestinian.

Settlers of all ages carried traditional bundles of fruit and branches used to celebrate the ongoing week-long holiday of Sukkot, or the Feast of the Tabernacles, with inflatable castles and clowns bringing a holiday atmosphere to the hilltop above Palestinian communities.

The settlers walked between Ganim and Kadim, settlements that are powerful symbols for their movement. The Israeli government dismantled them in 2005 under a policy meant to disengage from Palestinian population centres, and they were rebuilt this year under pro-settlement Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The dirt road connecting the settlements was flanked by dozens of uprooted olive trees, a reminder of the Palestinian presence forced out to make way for the settlements.

“Our wonderful people of Israel defeated Oslo,” senior settler leader Yossi Dagan told the crowd, referring to the 1990s peace process with the Palestinians. “Twenty-one years ago, when they uprooted the four communities, the disengagement from land was an attempt at disengagement from an idea, from Zionism,” he said.

“Together we will bring hundreds of thousands of Jews to our northern Samaria,” he said using the area’s biblical name. Kadim was dotted with Israeli flags and the army deployed to protect the settlers, a stark contrast to the Palestinian city of Jenin, below, where last year Israeli forces killed a number of Palestinians in an offensive.

On the road leading towards Israel, dozens of prefabricated homes were waiting to be installed to expand the settlements and entrench the Israeli hold on the area. “To be here specifically, and for the holiday, brings me twice as much joy,” Yishai Gerstle, 35, said.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2026