The dust still hangs over the places where men once tried to build lives between the sirens and the rockets. On 18 July, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz stood before the cameras and spoke plainly about what comes next.
I intend to establish three Nahal outposts, which is also a military entity, in those places that were Israeli settlements in northern Gaza.
His words carried the weight of decisions taken in rooms far from the heat of the border. Nahal outposts have always walked that blurred line between soldier and settler, rifle in one hand, spade in the other. Katz presented them as a return to ground once held, a practical measure in territory Israel now controls.
Major General Tamir Yadai had already laid out the numbers days earlier. Israel holds 65 percent of the Gaza Strip. The implication was clear enough: where you hold ground, you secure it. The three outposts would anchor that hold in the north, where the memory of 7 October still burns in the minds of those who survived it.
Funding that was never meant to be shouted from the rooftops
At the same time, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich moved money that had been approved in secret last month. 1.3 billion shekels earmarked for dozens of new settlements in the West Bank. The cabinet had kept the decision quiet. In the weeks that followed, the machinery turned anyway.
Smotrich has never hidden his view of the Oslo Accords. Last May, standing near the ancient reservoirs known as Solomon's Pools south of Bethlehem, he had been blunt.
