Palestinian officials have condemned a dramatic new settlement campaign Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank, including retroactively authorizing three outposts.
The move will further raise tensions in the territory, which has seen an increase in violence since the Gaza war began on October 7.
Palestinians claim the West Bank as part of their hoped-for future state. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disagrees.
The three illegal outposts, now legal under Israeli law, are described as new residential areas of existing settlements. They are located in sensitive areas in the Jordan Valley and near the southern city of Hebron.
Separately, the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now said Thursday that Israeli authorities have approved or pushed ahead with plans to build 5,295 homes in dozens of settlements.
This week also saw news that the Israeli government’s High Planning Council had approved the largest confiscation of land in the West Bank in more than three decades.
Some 12,700 dunams (5 square miles) have been confiscated in the Jordan Valley and declared Israeli state land. This year marked the peak in the extent of state land claims, with a total of 23,700 dunams affected.
Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeinah said the new announcements confirmed that “Israel’s extremist government is bound by the right-wing policy of war and settlement”.
He said the latest steps would not “bring security and peace to anyone” and were aimed at preventing the establishment of a geographically contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Last week, Israel’s security cabinet decided to allow the rebuilding of five settlement outposts without formal government approval.
The United Nations, the United Kingdom and other countries condemned the move as undermining hopes for a two-state solution – the internationally agreed peace formula under which an independent Palestinian state would be established alongside Israel.
“Israel must halt its illegal settlement expansion and hold those responsible for extreme settler violence to account,” the British Foreign Office said.
“The UK’s priority is to bring the conflict in Gaza to a sustainable end as quickly as possible and secure lasting peace in the Middle East, through an irreversible path towards a two-state solution.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a BBC request for comment on the overall strategy for the West Bank.
However, far-right Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in a West Bank settlement, welcomed the recent moves. “We are building good land and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state,” he said on Wednesday on the social media platform X.
Excluding annexed East Jerusalem, about half a million settlers live in the West Bank alongside three million Palestinians. Last year, Mr Smotrich instructed government agencies to prepare to double the number of settlers to one million.
Successive Israeli governments have allowed settlements to grow since Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War. But expansion has accelerated since Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the head of a hardline, pro-settler governing coalition.
Last month, Peace Now released an audio recording of Mr. Smotrich’s speech to his Religious Zionist Party, in which he proposed transferring control of settlements from the military to civilian officials, building a separate system of bypass roads for settlers, expanding agricultural outposts and cracking down on illegal Palestinian construction.
Peace Now warned that the plan would irreversibly change the way the West Bank is governed and lead to “de facto annexation”.
