Twenty-two families broke ground and established the new town of Emek Dotan in northern Samaria during a ceremony attended by government ministers, Knesset members, community leaders and local residents. The community is being built near the historic Dotan Valley and Joseph’s Pit.
2+The ceremony drew Samaria Governor Yossi Dagan, Education Minister Yoav Kisch, Minister Ze’ev Elkin, former Housing Minister and Knesset member Yitzhak Goldknopf, and Knesset members Ariel Kellner, Amit Halevi, Boaz Bismuth and Nissim Vaturi. Also attending were Amana movement Secretary-General Ze’ev Hever, Judea and Samaria Division Director-General Hoshea Harari, members of Homesh First and the founding families.
According to the Samaria Regional Council, Emek Dotan is the first new community established in northern Samaria since the four communities evacuated under the disengagement plan. It’s also the fifth town the Samaria Regional Council has established in less than a year.
2+The town is being established a year after a cabinet decision led by Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, as part of the “Reconnection Plan” spearheaded by the council. The plan includes establishing 19 new towns across northern Samaria, aimed at strengthening security and communities in the area.
Samaria Governer Yossi Dagan said at the ceremony: “Today we are correcting a historic injustice. Twenty-one years ago they tried to uproot us from the four communities in northern Samaria, thinking they could disconnect the people of Israel from their land. Today we are proving the opposite. Not only have we returned to northern Samaria, we are rebuilding it—bigger, stronger and more prosperous.”
2+Education Minister Yoav Kisch announced during the ceremony that a kindergarten will open for the community’s children at the start of the school year: “First of all I have good news, I don’t know if the children already know: there will be a kindergarten here! From the beginning of the year we’re opening a kindergarten for the children of Emek Dotan!”
Minister Ze’ev Elkin said he sees the town’s establishment as the fulfillment of the struggle to return Jewish communities to northern Samaria. Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Knesset member Boaz Bismuth blessed the first families and said it was “another historic and moving morning in Samaria.”
The founding group’s chairman, Amitai Weiss, who moved with his family to live there, said: “We are happy to be part of this huge movement of returning the Divine Presence to Zion, of returning the towns. With God’s help the town will grow, develop—a happy community, a strong community, a Torah community.”