A ceremony marking the establishment of the new community of Emek Dotan was held Sunday morning in northern Samaria in the West Bank. Ahead of the ceremony, 22 families from the community’s founding group moved into temporary structures placed at the site where the community will be built.
It is the fifth community established within the Samaria Regional Council in less than a year. The new community is being established as part of a Cabinet decision spearheaded by Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, under which a total of 19 new communities are slated to be established in northern Samaria.
"It is exciting to settle the land. We are doing something truly important here, and it is enjoyable and uplifting," Hadas Weiss, a resident of the new Emek Dotan community, said. "We never thought we would establish a community in Samaria, but when the opportunity came, it felt like the right and best thing to do."
The families from the founding group
(Photo: Elichai Menachem, Hanna Landman)
The ceremony was attended by Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, Education Minister Yoav Kisch, Minister Ze'ev Elkin, former housing minister and Knesset member Yitzhak Goldknopf, lawmakers Ariel Kallner, Amit Halevi, Boaz Bismuth and Nissim Vaturi, Amana movement Secretary-General Ze'ev Hever, known as Zambish, and Rabbi Haim Baruch, who heads pre-military institutions in Bruchin, Lod and Tiberias and whose graduates are establishing the community.
Also attending were members of the Homesh First movement, leaders of communities throughout Samaria, area residents and members of Emek Dotan's founding group.
"Today we are correcting a historic injustice," Dagan said at the ceremony. "Twenty-one years ago, they tried to uproot us from the four communities in northern Samaria, believing that the people of Israel could be severed from their land. Today we are proving the opposite. Not only have we returned to northern Samaria, we are rebuilding it bigger, stronger and more prosperous. In place of the four communities that were uprooted, 19 new communities will be established here."
Education Minister Yoav Kisch said: "When I entered the Knesset in 2015, we established the Land of Israel Caucus. At the time, the dream of repealing the Disengagement Law seemed almost impossible. But when you believe, fight for your vision and know justice is on your side, you achieve results."
Elkin said: "For years, I fought alongside my friend, council head Yossi Dagan, for the return of Jewish settlement to northern Samaria. It is difficult to describe the emotion of seeing our dream come true."