On February 28, 2024, some four months into Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, dozens of young Israeli settlers saw an opportunity to set a precedent. Nearly twenty years after Ariel Sharon’s government evacuated the Jewish settlements from Gaza, a small number of them — some reportedly carrying construction materials, while at least two were armed with the kind of rifles used by the military — stormed the Erez Crossing in a first attempt to rebuild Jewish settlements.

“We came here [because] we wanted to go home. I live in a community of deportees from Gush Katif, and we wanted to go back,” one eighteen-year-old settler told Local Call. “I would like the government to understand [what] the majority of the people already understood: We are here. It is ours. . . .  We need to go to Gaza, destroy all the terror there, and build there ourselves,” said another.

The settlers were successful — at least momentarily. They managed to erect a makeshift outpost, not unlike the kind seen in the occupied West Bank, which they named Nisanit Hachadasha (New Nisanit) after one of the settlements of Gush Katif, the Jewish settlement bloc that was evacuated as part of the 2005 disengagement plan. But unlike the disengagement, in which police and soldiers forcibly removed nine thousand settlers from a colony built in the heart of the Palestinian civilian population, this time Israeli security forces stood nearby and provided protection as the settlers swarmed. It would take several hours before the police arrived to remove them.