Rabbi Yosef Artziel sees the dawn of "a new age." According to this religious fundamentalist, the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 has plunged his country into "a revolutionary moment." This old ideologist, who lives in seclusion in the settlement of Kedumim in the north of the occupied West Bank, sees this disaster as a manifestation of divine will and a historic opportunity to advance his cause.

"People only grow through hardship. It took the Yom Kippur War in 1973 for Israel to start reclaiming its land in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]," he said. At the age of 26, the young Artziel left his peaceful religious community in southern Israel to join the Gush Emunim ("Bloc of the Faithful") movement, which launched the colonization of the West Bank.

He helped found the small settlement of Karnei Shomron and the largest Jewish town in the occupied territories, Ariel, as well as Kedumim, which over time has taken on the air of a peaceful American-style suburb. The efforts of its small vanguard have paid off: Over 700,000 settlers now live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Since the start of the war in Gaza, 10 of his grandchildren have been drafted into the army.

The rabbi has no doubt that this crisis will bring out "a new generation" within the settler movement, capable of turning Israel upside down, as his generation did in 1973. "Our movement will become much more important, because we saw the reality before anyone else," he said. "We never trusted the Arabs."

As the war heats up everyone's thoughts, the rabbi sees the ideas of one of his neighbors in Kedumim, Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Finance and Minister responsible for the West Bank in the Ministry of Defense, becoming more normalized. Back in 2017, Smotrich urged Israel to drive Palestinians out of "Greater Israel," subjugate those who remain and kill those who resist.

At the beginning of 2023, he aroused widespread disapproval by calling on the army to raze an entire West Bank village to the ground. But today, elected officials and former security chiefs from all sides, including the center, are echoing his radical plans, encouraging the army to drive Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians out of the enclave, into Egypt's Sinai desert.

Rabbi Artziel is also pleased to see the war intensifying in his part of the world, the West Bank. More than 250 Palestinians have been killed there since October 7 by the Israeli armed forces, made up in part by reservists from the settlements. A thousand Palestinians have also been driven off their land by settlers, whom the army protects and sometimes assists.

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