Israel is embarking on the largest expansion of West Bank settlements in decades, its finance minister announced Thursday, a step meant to reinforce Israeli control of the territory.
Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right minister who holds authority over civilian affairs in Israel’s settlements, announced the establishment of 22 settlements in the West Bank. Some are existing outposts that the Israeli government considered illegal but will now authorize. Others will be new towns.
Smotrich called the announcement a “once-in-a-generation decision” in a post on X.
“This is a great day for settlement and an important day for the state of Israel,” he wrote. “With courageous work and determined leadership we succeeded, with God’s help, to create a deep strategic change, the return of the state of Israel to a path of building, Zionism and vision.”
The next step, he wrote, was “sovereignty,” a term that connotes formal Israeli annexation of the territory or parts of it. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a statement that the decision will “prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state that will endanger Israel.”
The decision comes during a period of bloodshed in the West Bank. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and thousands arrested in Israeli military operations, and dozens of Israelis have been killed in Palestinian terror attacks, since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Reporters of settler violence have also spiked.
On Thursday morning, a newborn baby whose mother was killed in a West Bank shooting attack en route to delivering him died of his wounds.
Most of the world considers the West Bank to be occupied by Israel and considers Israeli settlements there illegal according to international law. Israel, which disputes that stance, conquered the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War; the first settlements were established there shortly afterward.
Today, roughly 500,000 Israeli settlers and some 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. Following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the territory was divided into three zones:
- Area A, which includes most Palestinian cities and the bulk of the Palestinian population, is governed by the Palestinian Authority, though the Israeli military regularly conducts operations there.
- Area B is split between Palestinian civil control and Israeli military control.
- Area C — which includes the Israeli settlements — is fully controlled by Israel and covers most of the West Bank’s land area.
For decades, much of the international community has hoped for the West Bank, along with Gaza, to be the site of a future Palestinian state. In 2005, alongside its withdrawal from Gaza, Israel unilaterally evacuated a number of settlements in the northern West Bank.
But the current Israeli government is staunchly opposed to establishing a Palestinian state, and support for a two-state solution has fallen among both Israelis and Palestinians. In 2023, Israel’s government repealed the 2005 West Bank evacuation decision. A portion of the 22 settlements announced on Thursday are in the same area.
The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the announcement. The Palestinian Authority condemned it as a “dangerous escalation,” according to the BBC, and the United Kingdom also criticized it.
“The Israeli government’s approval of 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank is a deliberate obstacle to Palestinian statehood,” tweeted Hamish Falconer, the British minister for the Middle East and North Africa. “The UK condemns these actions. Settlements are illegal under international law, further imperil the two state solution, and do not protect Israel.”
In recent years, leaders of the Israeli right have pushed for annexation of parts of the territory, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to extend Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank in the past. Now, right-wing politicians are celebrating Thursday’s announcement as a step in that direction.
“The true response to terror. Settlement – sovereignty – victory,” tweeted Simcha Rothman, a far-right lawmaker, above a map of the new settlements. Orit Strouk, a fellow hardline lawmaker, posted to Facebook, “Expressing in deeds our right to the land and our obligation toward it. Continuing to correct the sin of the disengagement.”
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