Settlers mass at Evyatar, vow to reestablish outpost in response to deadly attack

Hundreds of settlers, including leaders of the movement and members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, traveled to the illegal West Bank outpost of Evyatar overnight, urging the government to approve a new permanent settlement there in response to a deadly terror shooting Tuesday.

Pro-settlement activists, including teens and families, arrived at the West Bank hilltop saying they were returning for good, after years repeated efforts to re-establish a community there being stymied by the military.

Settler leaders, including Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot, Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan and Chief Samaria Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, were among those urging the expansion of settlement activity to punish Palestinians following a shooting attack at the nearby settlement of Eli that killed four people.

“We’ve returned home to Evyatar,” said Sukkot, one of the outpost’s founders. “Terrorists should know that any attack will only deepen the Jewish hold on the territory.”

“Two years after being evacuated, the time has come for us to return forever,” he added.

Dagan called the rebuilding of the outpost “the Zionist response to murderous terror.”

Head of the Samaria Regional Council Yossi Dagan (center-left), together with MK Zvi Sukkot (left), municipal rabbi for the Samaria Region Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, (center-right), and head of the Nachala Settlement Movement Tzvi Elimelech Sharbaf (right) at the illegal West Bank outpost of Evyatar Tuesday night, June 20, 2023. (Courtesy Nachala Settlement Movement)

“We will hit the Arab enemy where it hurts most. Anyone who tries to kick us off our land will get a thousand Evyatars… thousands of points of settlement,” he said in a statement.

Hundreds of the settler activists remained in the illegal outpost on Wednesday afternoon, with videos uploaded by those at the site showing dozens of young men studying inside some of the buildings that have been left intact in Evyatar, despite it having been evacuated in 2021.

לימוד תורה כרגע בישיבה באביתר

קרדיט: בית חבד אביתר pic.twitter.com/fjERw84DVQ

— שיראל ללום נהיר???????? (@shirellaloom) June 21, 2023

In a message sent out in an Evyatar WhatsApp group, activists stated that dozens of families had made their way to the outpost along with hundreds of youths.

The activists were bused in to Evyatar from several settlements, with two buses coming from Kiryat Arba, three from Elon Moreh, one from Rehelim, and one from the town of Nof Ayalon inside Israel.

More buses were expected to arrive from other West Bank settlements and Israeli towns during the course of the day, and the activists called for more people to go to Evyatar and to come prepared with water, warm clothes, and sleeping bags.

Activists including families with young children at the illegal West Bank outpost of Evyatar Tuesday night, June 20, 2023. (Courtesy Nachala Settlement Movement)

Evyatar was established in 2013 but has been destroyed and rebuilt on several occasions, until it was re-established most recently in 2021. In a deal with the then-outgoing Netanyahu government, settler activists in Evyatar agreed to leave the settlement pending a government review of the land and a commitment to legalize the outpost, and on condition that the buildings at the site were not demolished.

Afterward, the Bennett-Lapid government did not move forward with the agreement, but the Religious Zionism party demanded that Evyatar be legalized as one of the conditions of its agreement to join the current Netanyahu-led government.

However, Israel also agreed to a US-brokered deal with the Palestinians to halt  West Bank outpost legalizations for six months, set to expire in the coming weeks. Palestinians from the nearby village of Beita say Evyatar sits on lands Israel expropriated decades ago from their town.

In April, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who was recently given enhanced powers to approve settlement building, promised that Evyatar would be legalized soon, along with some 70 other wildcat outposts throughout the West Bank. He made the promise while visiting the site for an event that drew tens of thousands of people, including seven ministers and 20 Knesset members.

The right-wing march to the Evyatar outpost, near the West Bank city of Nablus, during the Passover holiday, on April 10, 2023 (Sraya Diamant/Flash90)

“This place will be bustling with life — Jews, upright, proud, lovers of the land and of the Torah, and just like Evyatar will be formalized, so too will [other] existing settlement [outposts] and new settlements, since this is our land,” Smotrich said at the time.

In a statement early Wednesday on the march to Evyatar, the Samaria Regional Council chided the government for failing to make good on its commitments to re-establish the settlement.

Groups of settlers have repeatedly returned to the hilltop, including for a mass prayer service held there earlier this week. According to the Nachala Settlement Movement, which has promoted Evyatar, the events at the abandoned site are meant to put additional pressure on the government to approve the outpost’s legalization.

A picture shows the Israeli outpost of Evyatar, near the Palestinian village of Beita, south of Nablus in the West Bank, on April 10, 2023. (Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP)

The renewed push early Wednesday came swiftly on the heels of a shooting attack at a hummus joint and gas station near the West Bank settlement of Eli that left four Israelis dead and four more hurt. One attacker was killed immediately by a bystander, while a second gunman was shot dead by troops following an hours-long manhunt.

Neither Smotrich nor National Security Minister Ben Gvir were at the march early Wednesday.

Times of Israel staff and the Associated Press contributed to this report.