Thousands of Israelis, including settlers and right-wing activists, marched Sunday towards the border with the Gaza Strip to call on the government to reinstate settlements in the war-torn Palestinian territory, an AFP journalist observed.

The protesters gathered near the border before converging on the fence overlooking the northern part of the territory, where Israeli security forces deployed to prevent them from going any further.

AFP images showed participants waving Israeli flags, while soldiers and police officers blocked their access to the restricted area.

"We are marching today to tell the Israeli government and show the whole world that this land belongs to us, that Gaza truly belongs to us and that we want to return there," said participant Daniel Sellem.

"We lived there before being evicted in 2005," he added.

Participants presented this mobilization as a demonstration of support for the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, more than twenty years after the dismantling of all Israeli settlements.

According to Daniel Sellem, the goal is to increase pressure on the government to allow a return to the Gaza Strip. "I am hopeful that this will work and that we will return to live there as soon as possible," he said.

Another participant, Yechiel Greenblum, believed that this demonstration marked the beginning of a campaign in favor of the return of Israeli communities to the enclave.

"We are organizing a great march back to the Gaza Strip, where Jews have lived for hundreds, even thousands of years," he said, asserting that the withdrawal from settlements in 2005 had only been temporary.

According to him, there is "no reason" preventing Jews from returning to settle in the northern Gaza Strip, this march being "only the beginning" of a broader effort to re-establish Israeli settlements.

In the past, other groups of Israelis had already organized marches to the border with Gaza in order to pressure the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most right-wing in the country's history, to re-establish settlements in the territory.

The Israeli army currently controls more than 60% of the Gaza Strip, where daily violence continues despite the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.