0300 hours. Press not admitted.

Opening Hours

August 21, 2026 · Ibid.

Night-time editorial cartoon: on a black hilltop, three Israeli officials stand on a plywood stage behind an uncut red ribbon with the scissors still lying unused; the labelled minister has instead thrown a huge industrial lever, and the thing it has switched on is a floodlight mast whose hard white beam crosses the valley and pins one small Palestinian house, its window half bricked up with fresh breeze blocks. A stone marker on the stage reads KADIM.

Israeli settlers have re-established Kadim, a West Bank settlement near Jenin dismantled in the 2005 Disengagement, with 30 families moving in, some under military escort. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana and settler council head Yossi Dagan attended the state opening ceremony, from which media were barred; the government has approved more than 100 new settlements since late 2022. All settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law, and a Palestinian teacher living beside the nearby Emek Dotan settlement says groups shine powerful floodlights through his windows at two or three in the morning.