OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Palestine Foundation Information Center) Hamas said the Israeli War Minister Yoav Gallant’s decision to repeal parts of the 2005 Disengagement Law, allowing Israelis to return to three illegal West Bank settlements evacuated 19 years ago, represents a continuation of the Israeli aggressive policy of settlement that denies the right of the Palestinian people to their land.
The cancellation of the Disengagement Law with the northern West Bank, announced by Gallant on Wednesday, allows the construction of illegal settlements previously evacuated.
In a statement on Wednesday, Hamas called on the Palestinians in the West Bank to confront the Israeli settlement policies, demanding the international community and the United Nations to assume their responsibilities in putting an end to settlement and holding Israeli occupation authority (IOA) accountable for its crimes and continuous violations of the international law.
Gallant’s move came as an enforcement of the Israeli Knesset decision issued on March 21 to revoke the Disengagement Law which stipulated the evacuation of 4 settlements in the northern West Bank, in conjunction with the Israeli army’s withdrawing and evacuating its settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
Gallant’s office explained in a statement that Gallant “issued instructions to enforce the law in the settlements of Sanour, Ghaneim, and Kadim after the issuance of a preliminary order about the Homesh settlement.”
During the time of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon which witnessed successive military failures, the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the settlements of the Gaza Strip in 2005, as a part of a plan known at the time as “disengagement”.
In a related context, the President of the Israeli Settlement Council in the northern West Bank, Yossi Dagan, described the decision as a “historic moment of correction.”
