“Not many people believed it would be possible to establish new communities,” said council head Yaron Rosenthal.
The number of Jewish communities in the Gush Etzion region of Judea doubled under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, regional council head Yaron Rosenthal said on Wednesday.
“Not many people believed it would be possible to establish new communities. Occasionally, individual communities were approved under very specific circumstances. But under this government, the number of communities in Gush Etzion has doubled over the past three years,” Rosenthal told attendees at a ceremony marking the expansion of the town of Gevaot, Israel National News reported.
“The primary credit for this transformation goes, first and foremost, to our friend” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, he added.
The event was attended by hundreds of Gush Etzion residents, as well as Smotrich, who oversees civilian matters in Judea and Samaria as part of his role as a junior minister in the Israeli Defense Ministry.