Thousands of people from all over the country marched to the Samaria community of Homesh Tuesday to call on the government to leave the Homesh yeshiva where it is and not to harm the Jewish communities of Samaria.
Among the marchers were MKs Idit Silman, Bezalel Smotrich, Michal Waldiger, Orit Struck, Etty Atia, Samaria Regional Council Chairman Yossi Dagan, Rosh Yeshivat Homesh Rabbi Elishama Cohen and the families of terror victims Yehuda Dimentman and Shuli Har-Melekh.
Ettya Dimentman, the wife of Yehuda, who was murdered in a terrorist shooting attack near Homesh in December, said:: "About 100 years ago there was an illegal aliyah to Eretz Yisrael, and the fathers of everyone in the government also immigrated via this illegal aliyah. The British ruled here and it was illegal. We are the settlers today, we who are called settlers and extremists do the same thing, make illegal immigration to the land of Israel, because your ancestors also immigrated to the land of Israel and it was not legal, but the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel, and whoever thinks that is not true is welcome to move to another country."
"The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel, we are neither settlers nor extremists, we are just coming home. All the soldiers who fell all the years in the wars, what did they fall for? They fell because they reclaimed the land of Israel," the widow added.
"My husband Yehuda was also murdered because we are reclaiming the land of Israel," Ettya said. ''Today everyone is coming here on foot, freely, but tomorrow morning there will be a checkpoint here again, and if there is a checkpoint here again then this government is saying that this country does not belong to us. Naftali Bennett says that this land does not belong to us, but belongs to Mansour Abbas and not to the people of Israel."
"This Passover everyone has to choose which side he is on, whether he is on the side of the land of Israel and the people of Israel or of returning to Egypt, the decision is ours. And there is a famous saying in Judaism that although you do not have to complete a job, you are not free to desist from it, and that is so true. We do not know if in our lives we will be able to reclaim the whole Land of Israel but we have a role to at least try to do it. Now we are going up to Homesh and we will continue to ascend to Sa-Nur and Gush Katif and Sinai to all the borders of the Promised Land that are ours," Dimentman said.
MK Idit Silman said: "We came here with the Dimentman and Har-Melekh families, more than 70 buses will go up to Homesh today, in a massive march, and we are with them with great pride, in a time of redemption, a time of miracles."
"We are all waiting for the complete redemption that includes the settlement of the land," the MK added. "The settlement of the land comes from Torah study, from the amazing work in Homesh - people who dedicate themselves to the sanctification of G-d for the sake of Torah study. The redemption is close at hand."
MK Smotrich said at the march: "I have no expectations from this government that has surrendered to Islam. Whoever blocks the steps of the heroes from Homesh, we have no dialogue with them, we will replace them soon. I came here to receive huge reinforcement from the masses of the people of Israel who continue all of Zionism as a whole. We came to stand behind the families and the students, we came to commit to settling the land of Israel in all its areas, to continue Zionism. The people of Israel are alive and strong and will win."
Samaria Regional Council chairman Yossi Dagan called on the government to respond to the people's demands and not to harass the people of Homesh. "The public that came here in droves represents the vast majority of the people of Israel, who are a healthy public, connected to their people and have national dignity and uprightness, and this public says to the government - keep your hands off of Homesh, Stop with the evacuations and checkpoints and the people of Israel will correct the mistake of the disengagement and return to Homesh and Sa-Nur. "A government that abandons both the Negev and Homesh will be replaced with a government that the people of Israel deserve - a fully right-wing government," Dagan said.