West Bank: Israeli settlers support for ruling coalition in Itamar
7 October-7 December. Two months ago, Israel was hit by unprecedented attacks. Since then, the war in Gaza has killed more than 16,000 people, according to local authorities. Israel still intends to eradicate Hamas' presence in Gaza and release the 138 hostages still held in the Palestinian enclave. In Itamar, Israeli far-right settlers are backing the ruling coalition, while the United States announces sanctions against violent settlers in the West Bank.
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Itamar, an Israeli settlement in the northern West Bank, was established in 1984. © CC BY-SA 2.5 / Wikimedias commons
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With our special correspondents in Itamar, Nicolas Falez and Julien Boileau
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You see between the mountains, this is the city of Schem. The Arabs call it Nablus. We prefer its biblical name, Shem. Moshe Goldshmidt was born in Brooklyn, USA. But he has lived here for 38 years in Itamar, a Jewish settlement in the northern occupied West Bank. "We don't call it the West Bank, but Judea and Samaria," said the settler, whose convictions remain intact after the October 7 attacks. "Having a Jewish presence here means that we are literally protecting the cities of Kfar Saba, Tel Aviv, Netanya from a similar attack," Goldshmidt said.
« A failure of the intelligence services »
1,800 Israelis live in Itamar, where the overwhelming majority of people vote for the religious nationalist parties that are part of Israel's ruling coalition. And according to Moshe Goldschmidt, it was not the right-wing government that failed to prevent the October 7 attacks. "This is a total failure of the intelligence services. It's unbelievable! How did thousands of terrorists get into the country? " he says. " For the West Bank settler, Israel should never have evacuated its settlements from Gaza in 2005. He also dreams of seeing them rebuilt.
Moshe Goldschmidt speaks of "lies" when referring to the abuses committed by settlers in the region against Palestinians. "A lie," he said when asked if military reinforcements to protect settlements in his region had left the southerners, who were attacked by Hamas on October 7, vulnerable. The rabbi-settler of Itamar believes that Hamas must be eliminated. According to him, "in the Middle East, we may be on the verge of a world war," he concludes.
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