Sa-Nur

Sa-Nur’s history encompasses a small religious communal settlement, an artists’ colony, evacuation under the 2005 disengagement plan, and eventual reestablishment in 2026.[2][1] Together with Homesh, Ganim, and Kadim, it formed the northern Samaria component of a withdrawal that also encompassed all 21 Israeli communities in the Gaza Strip.[5] Its former residents’ efforts to return continued through visits, demonstrations, and attempted reoccupation before the legal and administrative changes that permitted renewed residence.[6][7]

The settlement occupies a hill with a former British police fortress, built in 1941 on the Jenin–Nablus road and originally called Silat al-Dhahr Police Station.[8] The fortress became a focal point both of resistance to the 2005 evacuation and of subsequent attempts to return.[8] Before renewed residence, access to the site remained controlled by the Israeli military; a January 2025 prayer service took place under IDF protection, and travel to Sa-Nur continued to depend on military security arrangements.[8][7]

The Dotan core group first settled Sa-Nur in 1977.[2] The community served as an artists’ colony from 1984 and adopted the name Sa-Nur in 1987.[2] Its artists were mostly immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and the settlement struggled to grow.[8][9]

During the Second Intifada, residents began leaving, and at one point only seven residents remained.[8] Yossi Dagan and Ariel Perel encouraged religious families to move to the community to strengthen morale and security.[9] After disengagement was announced, about 20 yeshiva students from Hebron and several young families arrived to reinforce the settlement; Dagan, later chairman of the Samaria Regional Council, was among the newcomers.[8]

The revised disengagement plan of June 6, 2004, designated Sa-Nur, Ganim, Kadim, and Homesh for evacuation.[10] It called for removing military installations in the area, redeploying outside it, and ending the permanent presence of Israeli security forces there after implementation.[10] Its stated regional objectives included reducing friction with the Palestinian population and facilitating Palestinian territorial contiguity, transportation, and economic activity.[10] The relocation process was intended to be completed by the end of 2005.[10]

The wider plan presented disengagement as an Israeli initiative that did not depend on Palestinian cooperation.[11] Its stated considerations included breaking a harmful stalemate and improving Israel’s security, political, economic, and demographic situation.[11] The removal of northern Samaria settlements was coordinated with the United States administration and was a precondition for American support for the disengagement plan.[12] The revised plan also linked the initiative to the Road Map framework while describing Palestinian territorial contiguity as an aim of the northern Samaria withdrawal.[10]

In the months before evacuation, opponents of disengagement moved into Sa-Nur.[13] In June 2005, 20 additional families were expected to join 58 families who had arrived during the preceding two months.[13] Some newcomers lived in tents, while a yeshiva in Kiryat Arba sent 30 students each week to reinforce the anti-disengagement presence.[13] Only four months earlier, the community had been described as an obscure village of 12 artists, mostly new immigrants.[13]

Implementation of disengagement began on August 15, 2005, and security forces began removing residents who had not left voluntarily on August 17.[5] The northern Samaria evacuation was completed on August 23.[5] Sa-Nur was the last of the four northern communities to be emptied, with approximately 700 people removed from the site.[14] Across Sa-Nur and Homesh together, approximately 1,500 people were evacuated.[14]

Residents and activists barricaded themselves on the roof of Sa-Nur’s old police fortress.[15] During the final removal, dozens of young people were brought down from the roof in containers.[14] Across the evacuations at Sa-Nur and Homesh, 40 settlers were arrested, while 19 security personnel and 15 civilians sustained minor injuries.[14] A rabbi who left the roof carrying a Torah scroll expressed his belief that the people of Israel would return.[15]

The overall disengagement ended on September 11, 2005, after the evacuation of the four northern Samaria communities and 21 communities in Gaza.[16] Close to 9,000 people were evacuated across the entire operation; that figure was not a count of Sa-Nur’s residents.[16] The evacuated northern Samaria territory became a closed military area under the Disengagement Law, which barred Israeli citizens from entering it.[12]

After the evacuation, Sa-Nur’s synagogue was covered with sand and earth to protect the building from desecration.[3] The measure followed the ransacking and burning of synagogues left standing in Gaza.[3] Israeli troops were to continue patrolling the area around Sa-Nur and the other three evacuated northern Samaria settlements.[3]

Former residents and supporters returned to Sa-Nur on multiple occasions to press for its restoration.[6][7] In July 2015, a group of 19 families and approximately 100 youths returned to the site.[6] They spent another night in the fortress after an anticipated afternoon removal did not take place.[6] A subsequent gathering in 2017 again brought supporters to the ruins to demand a return; former resident Noam Waldman expressed the attachment behind the campaign: “We miss this land. We miss our home.”[4]

On December 18, 2022, shots were fired at an Israeli bus returning from a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony at Sa-Nur.[17] The ceremony had been coordinated with and authorized by the IDF.[17] There were no reported casualties, but the bus was damaged, and a security-force examination indicated that seven bullets had been fired.[17]

On March 21, 2023, the Knesset approved an amendment repealing the prohibition on Israelis entering and remaining in the evacuated northern Samaria areas.[12] The vote was 31–18.[7] The amendment also reversed the earlier law’s nullification of property rights in those areas.[18] Its explanatory notes stated that, with time, “there was no longer any justification to prevent Israelis from entering and staying in the evacuated area.”[18]

The IDF Central Command commander signed an implementing order on May 20, 2023.[12] Access to Sa-Nur nevertheless remained subject to further military and administrative measures.[7] In May 2024, the defense minister lifted the remaining entry restriction covering Sa-Nur, Kadim, and Ganim.[8] Permanent residence remained subject to military approval and security preparations; as of January 2025, the IDF had not approved a return to those three settlements.[7]

In May 2025, the Israeli government approved reestablishing Sa-Nur as part of a decision concerning 22 communities in Judea and Samaria.[1] By January 2026, the renewed settlement had received formal recognition, a military commander had signed an order granting it official status, and a planning scheme had been approved.[8] Preparations included a bypass road estimated to cost 20 million shekels.[8] Approximately 500 dunams of privately owned Palestinian land from Silat al-Dhahr and Jaba were expropriated for the road.[8]

By March 2026, caravans had been placed at Sa-Nur and planning approval for 126 housing units had been reported, but residents were not yet permitted to remain continuously while military preparations continued.[19] On April 19, 16 families moved to the site, and a ceremony marked the settlement’s repopulation.[1] Yossi Dagan, by then chairman of the Samaria Regional Council and a former Sa-Nur resident, spoke at the ceremony and described the return as a personal and national closing of a circle.[20] Hundreds attended, including government ministers and members of the Knesset.[20]

On April 29, 2026, the Civil Administration’s Higher Planning Committee gave final approval to plans for 126 permanent housing units.[21] This followed the initial families’ move into temporary prefabricated homes.[21]

A July 2005 profile described Sa-Nur as a religious communal settlement with 15 families and capacity planned for 80.[2] Its earlier artists’ community consisted largely of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, while the departures during the Second Intifada were followed by the arrival of religious-nationalist families and yeshiva students.[8][9]

The community’s population changed rapidly during the campaign against disengagement.[13] A June 2005 account described dozens of families arriving within two months, including people accommodated in tents.[13] A retrospective account published in 2015 described Sa-Nur as having been cleared of 40 families in 2005.[22] The approximately 700 people removed during the final evacuation included the substantial presence assembled at the site to resist disengagement and should not be read as a count of established households.[13][14]

The first group to take up residence at the reestablished settlement on April 19, 2026, comprised 16 families.[1] They arrived after caravans had been placed at the site and before the permanent housing plan received final approval later that month.[19][21]

Sa-Nur’s period as an artists’ colony began in 1984, three years before it received its later name.[2] Its artists’ group remained associated with the community even as the Second Intifada reduced the resident population and religious families arrived to reinforce it.[8] The former Soviet immigrant artists and the later religious-nationalist arrivals formed successive strands in the settlement’s social history.[8][9]

Religious observance continued to bring visitors to the evacuated site.[17][7] The December 2022 Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony was held with IDF authorization, while a January 2025 prayer service took place during the period when a permanent return still lacked military approval.[17][7] These visits occurred alongside the longer campaign by former residents and supporters to restore the community.[4]

The British police fortress on Sa-Nur’s hill dates to 1941, when it was built as Silat al-Dhahr Police Station on the Jenin–Nablus road.[8] Its roof became one of the principal settings of resistance during the 2005 evacuation.[14] The building also served as a gathering place during the July 2015 attempted return, when families and young supporters spent the night there.[6]

The settlement’s synagogue was preserved after evacuation by covering it with sand and earth.[3] Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar explained the decision: “We decided that in order to avoid a desecration of a synagogue we should bury it in order to keep the building intact on the spot where it stood.”[3] Former settlers’ spokesman Yossi Dagan objected to the method, saying, “Pouring tons of sand on a synagogue amounts to its destruction, its desecration.”[3]

The reversal of restrictions on residence in northern Samaria generated disagreement over Israel’s commitments to the United States and the implications for future settlement construction.[23] Former U.S. ambassador Dan Kurtzer called the 2023 legislation “an egregious violation of a commitment to the United States,” while the authors of a Jerusalem Center legal analysis argued that it permitted former residents to return rather than authorizing new settlement construction.[23] Those authors also argued that return required legal and security arrangements and resolution of Palestinian land-ownership claims.[23]

Renewed settlement and construction in northern Samaria drew criticism from the United States and European Union, which viewed the measures as violating international law.[24] The Israeli government framed them as correcting an injustice caused by disengagement.[24] At the April 2026 ceremony, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called the return a “historic correction,” while Dagan described it as a personal and national closing of a circle.[20] Smotrich also linked settlement expansion to defeating the prospect of a Palestinian state.[1]