Israelis began moving into the occupied West Bank settlement of Kadim on Thursday, the local settler council said, the last of four communities from which Israel withdrew more than two decades ago to be repopulated.

It came a week after Israel officially reopened neighboring Ganim, in a move emblematic of the current government's policy of rapid settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territory.

The Samaria regional council, which administers Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank, described the return to Kadim as a "historic milestone".

"At this very moment, the families of the pioneering settler core are moving into Kadim, a community that was uprooted during the disengagement," it said in a statement.

It said that 30 families were moving to live permanently in the settlement, accompanied on Thursday by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and head of the Samaria regional council, Yossi Dagan.

Kadim is one of four Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that Israel evacuated under former prime minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan in 2005, which also included abandoning all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip.

The move came partly because of their isolated location in the north of the West Bank, among many Palestinian cities and villages.

On Thursday, the settlers traveled in small groups, some of them accompanied by a military escort, with Israeli flags attached to their car. Some of their cars had trailers attached loaded with bedding and furniture.

In recent weeks, white trailer homes have appeared on the Ganim hilltop, ahead of the settlers' return.

Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, settlement construction and expansion have surged, including with the re-establishment of all four evacuated communities - Ganim, Sa-Nur, Homesh and now Kadim.

"Twenty-one years after the crime of the expulsion from northern Samaria, today we have completed the rectification," Smotrich was quoted as saying in the statement on Thursday.

"These communities constitute a real security buffer for the entire State of Israel," he added, vowing to establish 19 settlements in the northernmost part of the West Bank.

Dagan said: "We have come home, and this time to stay and grow twentyfold."

"We are raising the flag again, closing the circle, and continuing to build Samaria with full force," he added, using the Biblical term for the northern West Bank.

Dismay

There was dismay in the Palestinian community. Jenin Governorate's settlement affairs official, Tareq Ighbariya, said that the move was aimed at reshaping the reality of the governorate and imposing new facts on the ground.

He told Palestinian news network Yaffa News Network that the re-establishment of the Ganim and Kadim settlements indicated the "effective cancellation of the disengagement plan implemented in 2005." 

Journalists were forbidden to speak to people at the opening ceremony.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. More than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the territory, which are illegal under international law, among some three million Palestinians.

Violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers has increased dramatically since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas from the Gaza Strip.