Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan has spent the last three-days at the Romanian-Ukrainian border to offer Jewish refugees the option of a home in his region of the West Bank.
“It’s heartbreaking to see hundreds of families, women and children, waiting for someone to help them, so they can finally lay their heads down in a place that can be called home,” Dagan said.
“I have heard from the refugees here about their fear of returning to the Ukrainian cities and villages from which they fled,” Dagan said, adding that they had also told him “about the incessant bombing and the anxiety.
“The heart of Samaria is open to accept our Ukrainian brothers,” he said.
Dagan traveled with a delegation of six people from the council, including Ukrainian speakers. The council is setting up a special team to help absorb families in Samaria.
Some four families from Ukraine have already moved into the settlements of Yitzhar and Revava.
The Gush Etzion Regional Council has also sought to absorb the new immigrants.
Israel is preparing for the possible influx of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Ukraine, with settler leaders hoping that a portion of those new immigrants will move into Judea and Samaria.
The potential of a new immigration wave comes at a time when the growth rate in the settlements has been dropping, hitting an all-time low of 2.3% in 2020, according to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, down from 5% in 2012.