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Israel to Rebuild Four Settlements It Withdrew from in 2005

Tires burnt by Palestinians towards the Evyatar outpost, south of Nablus, November 2022 (AFP)
Tires burnt by Palestinians towards the Evyatar outpost, south of Nablus, November 2022 (AFP)
    Tel Aviv -Asharq Al-Awsat
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Israel to Rebuild Four Settlements It Withdrew from in 2005

Tires burnt by Palestinians towards the Evyatar outpost, south of Nablus, November 2022 (AFP)
Tires burnt by Palestinians towards the Evyatar outpost, south of Nablus, November 2022 (AFP)

Israeli head of the Shomron regional council, Yossi Dagan, announced that he met with the new Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and discussed the necessity of rebuilding four settlements that were evacuated in the West Bank.

Dagan stated that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing to change the status quo in the north of the West Bank and would rebuild the four settlements which Israel withdrew from in 2005.

He pledged to tackle this “stigma” represented in the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, which led to Israeli full military and civil withdrawal from Gaza as well as the evacuation of four settlements in the north of the West Bank.

The Homesh settlement is one of four evacuated according to a 2005 law established under Ariel Sharon's government and part of the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.

According to the law, the sites became closed military areas banned for entry and residence. But Ehud Olmert's government did not demolish the houses at the time. His government did, however, demolish all settlements and houses in the Gaza settlements.

The settlers wanted to return to the Homesh buildings and kept revisiting the region, aiming to relocate there. They also established a religious school there.
However, entry to the area is illegal. An indictment was filed against Rabbi Elisha Cohen, the prominent cleric in the settlement because he visited it after its evacuation.

US President Joe Biden's administration expressed opposition to building new settlements in the West Bank, in general, and in Homesh, in particular.

“Our call to refrain from unilateral steps certainly includes any decision to create a new settlement, to legalize outposts or allowing buildings of any kind deep in the West Bank adjacent Palestinian communities or on private Palestinian land,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said when asked about the Homesh outpost during a Wednesday press briefing.

“The Homesh outpost in the West Bank is illegal even under Israeli law,” Price told reporters.

Israeli media spoke about plans by 1,000 settlers to spend the Passover next spring in Evyatar while 500 settlers plan to visit Homesh.

The Passover occurs on April 5, only a few days after the 90-day deadline set by the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice for the government to explain the reason for not demolishing the Homesh settlement so far.

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Arab World

Displaced Syrians Who Have Returned Home Face a Fragile Future, Says UN Refugees Chief

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
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Displaced Syrians Who Have Returned Home Face a Fragile Future, Says UN Refugees Chief

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)
A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows Syria's interim Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani (R) meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in the Syrian capital Damascus on June 20, 2025. (SANA / AFP)

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said Friday that more than two million Syrian refugees and internally displaced people have returned home since the fall of the government of Bashar al-Assad in December.

Speaking during a visit to Damascus that coincided with World Refugee Day, Grandi described the situation in Syria as “fragile and hopeful” and warned that the returnees may not remain if Syria does not get more international assistance to rebuild its war-battered infrastructure.

“How can we make sure that the return of the Syrian displaced or refugees is sustainable, that people don’t move again because they don’t have a house or they don’t have a job or they don’t have electricity?” Grandi asked a small group of journalists after the visit, during which he met with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani and spoke with returning refugees.

“What is needed for people to return, electricity but also schools, also health centers, also safety and security,” he said.

Syria’s near 14-year civil war, which ended last December with the ouster of Assad in a lightning opposition offensive, killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.

Grandi said that 600,000 Syrians have returned to the country since Assad’s fall, and about another 1.5 million internally displaced people returned to their homes in the same period.

However, there is little aid available for the returnees, with multiple crises in the region -- including the new Israel-Iran war -- and shrinking support from donors. The UNHCR has reduced programs for Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, including healthcare, education and cash support for hundreds of thousands in Lebanon.

“The United States suspended all foreign assistance, and we were very much impacted, like others, and also other donors in Europe are reducing foreign assistance,” Grandi said, adding: “I tell the Europeans in particular, be careful. Remember 2015, 2016 when they cut food assistance to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, the Syrians moved toward Europe.”

Some have also fled for security reasons since Assad's fall. While the situation has stabilized since then, particularly in Damascus, the new government has struggled to extend its control over all areas of the country and to bring a patchwork of former opposition groups together into a national army.

Grandi said the UNHCR has been in talks with the Lebanese government, which halted official registration of new refugees in 2015, to register the new refugees and “provide them with basic assistance.”

“This is a complex community, of course, for whom the chances of return are not so strong right now,” he said. He said he had urged the Syrian authorities to make sure that measures taken in response to the attacks on civilians “are very strong and to prevent further episodes of violence.”

The Israel-Iran war has thrown further fuel on the flames in a region already dealing with multiple crises. Grandi noted that Iran is hosting millions of refugees from Afghanistan who may now be displaced again.

The UN does not yet have a sense of how many people have fled the conflict between Iran and Israel, he said.

“We know that some Iranians have gone to neighboring countries, like Azerbaijan or Armenia, but we have very little information. No country has asked for help yet,” he said. “And we have very little sense of the internal displacement, because my colleagues who are in Iran - they’re working out of bunkers because of the bombs.”