The grandmother who wants to lead Israelis back to a Gaza without Palestinians

Middle East 20 March, 2024 20:10

The message went out the day before on several WhatsApp groups: A chance to meet Daniella Weiss, the godmother of the Zionist settler movement, for an informational session on the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza after the war.

By the time the evening’s host had put out freshly baked chocolate babka for the 20 guests circled in her living room in the Karnai Shomron settlement in the West Bank, Weiss was already well into her pitch.

But her audience needed little convincing. They were true believers with deep nostalgia for Gush Katif, even if some were too young to have been able to remember it existing. The bloc of 21 Israeli settlements was forcibly evacuated by the Israel Defense Forces in 2005 when Israel left the Gaza Strip.

“Register, register. You’ll be in Gaza,” Weiss said with an intense gaze, the 78-year-old telling her audience she is absolutely convinced it will happen in her lifetime.

Any such land grab from the Palestinians would be illegal under international law, impractical and likely to engender global outrage against Israel.

Weiss said 500 families have already signed up to resettle through her organization Nachala, whose name means “inheritance.” One of Nachala’s members told the group they were sending a representative to Florida to raise money for the cause.  Nachala already receives support from groups in the US, including Americans for a Safe Israel, even as the Biden administration strengthens its opposition to settlements in the West Bank.

Of the more than a dozen organizations now pushing for re-establishing settlements in Gaza, Weiss’ Nachala is the best known. She comes from the original generation of settlers and has been leading the movement for decades.

Weiss projects the image of a charismatic grandmother, her hair wrapped and her face seeming kind around that direct gaze, as she delivers her message with devout conviction. But at their core, her ideas are rooted in beliefs of Jewish exceptionalism and her policies have no room for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian strife.

Projected on the wall during Weiss’ presentation was her vision of post-war Gaza, a map with six nucleus groups laying claim to settlements spanning the entire length and width of the strip. There were no areas for the two million or so Palestinians who call it home now and who have seen lives, homes and communities devastated by the ongoing war, sparked by Hamas’ massacre of Israeli citizens last October 7.