AFP — Seated at a table draped in a floral plastic cover inside his prefabricated home, Meir Goldmintz said he is finally fulfilling a dream he has carried for two decades: “returning to Sa-Nur.”

The tiny settlement, perched above Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank, was dismantled in 2005 along with three other Jewish settlements in the area, as well as all the settlements in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the territory, known in Israel as the Disengagement.

Now, its re-establishment — approved by Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration, an agency of the Defense Ministry for the construction of 126 housing units — is freighted with symbolic significance.

For critics of the settlement enterprise, it represents another major step backward, pushing further away the prospect of a Palestinian state.

But for Goldmintz and his neighbors in their rows of white bungalows, it is, as far‑right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said during an official reopening ceremony, a “historic correction.”

“His brother lives next door,” said Goldmintz, whose neighbors also include influential settler leader Yossi Dagan, head of the northern West Bank Settlements Council and one of those evacuated from Sa-Nur 20 years ago.

Newly established settlements are generally wary of foreign media, which residents see as hostile to their cause.

But AFP was granted rare access last week to Sa-Nur, reached by a dirt road controlled by an Israeli army checkpoint.

Bicycles and bulldozers

Only Goldmintz agreed to speak to AFP, though he insisted the focus shouldn’t be on him.

“I don’t want people to think I’m special,” Goldmintz said.

“My personal story doesn’t matter. The story is the return of the Jewish people.”

He had never lived in Sa-Nur before 2005, yet he marched alongside the settlers demanding its re-establishment as part of their........

© The Times of Israel