Israel’s Push to Expand West Bank Settlements Explained
Israel’s efforts to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank have intensified this year. This reflects the agenda of the country’s right-wing government and has led to international condemnation of a practice that most countries consider to be in violation of international law.
Critics say the settlement expansion undermines prospects for a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution, which refers to the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Many supporters of the settler movement oppose the idea of a Palestinian state, seeing the West Bank, which they call by its biblical names Judea and Samaria, as the birthright of the Jewish people or as a necessary buffer for Israel’s security.
Palestinians say the settlements eat up the land they consider theirs for a future state, often blocking access to land they used to farm. They are also creating a two-tiered legal system in the area — one set of rules for Israelis and another for Palestinians living under military rule.
What is the current situation?
In the six months since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government – the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history – came to power, the country’s planning authorities have advanced or approved permits for 13,000 new housing units in West Bank settlements, according to Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group.
That is the highest number ever recorded since 2012, when the group began systematically monitoring Jewish structures in the occupied territory.
This week, planning authorities have moved about 5,700 homes forward in the pipeline for final construction. More than 800 are in the final stages of a multi-stage approval process that often takes years.
Recently, as violence in the West Bank intensified, the government has introduced plans for new settlements and reduced red tape to speed up the planning process, and is taking more aggressive action against Palestinian militias.
Following an attack outside the settlement of Eli in the West Bank on June 20 in which two Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis, Mr. Netanyahu plans to build another 1,000 settler homes there. His administration also pushed ahead this week with plans for an additional 4,700 homes in the West Bank – part of a pledged total of 10,000 settler homes that it pledged to build earlier this year.
Attacks by Palestinians against Israelis living in the settlements and elsewhere have increased sharply this year, as has settler violence against Palestinians.
This month, the government eased the process for approving the construction of new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and handed oversight from Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant to Treasury Secretary Bezalel Smotrich. Mr. Smotrich is a far-right former settlement activist who advocates for the Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
And in March, Israel’s parliament repealed legislation that excluded settlers from four Jewish communities in the occupied West Bank evacuated in 2005, allowing visits there, though the government would still have to approve any reconstruction in the areas.
The United States has strongly condemned plans for new housing, as well as changes intended to speed up planning for future construction in the settlements.
Are the settlements legal?
Israel captured the West Bank, along with East Jerusalem, from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War and soon allowed Israelis to settle there.
The United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice have all said that Israeli settlements in the West Bank violate the Fourth Geneva Convention. The treaty, which was ratified by 192 countries in the aftermath of World War II, says that an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer to the territory it occupies any part of its own civilian population.”
The statute establishing the International Criminal Court in 1998 classifies such transfers as war crimes.
Israel argues that a Jewish presence has existed in the West Bank for thousands of years and that Jordanian rule over the area, from 1948 to 1967, was never recognized by most of the world. Israel considers the area disputed and says its fate must be negotiated.
Under the Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s, both sides agreed that the status of the Israeli settlements would be resolved through negotiations. However, the last round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks ended abruptly and failed in 2014.
How many settlements are there?
Since 1967, more than 130 settlements have been built with the permission of the Israeli government. In addition, more than 100 outposts have been built without government authorization since the 1990s. Israeli authorities are working to retroactively authorize many of them.
Some settlements have been built under every Israeli government in recent decades. More than 400,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank along with more than 2.6 million Palestinians.
Some settlements are home to religious Zionists who believe the area is their biblical birthright. Many secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews also moved there largely for cheaper housing.
What is the government’s strategy?
In 1998, while the Israeli government was negotiating to cede territory to the Palestinians, Ariel Sharon, the then foreign minister, urged the settlers in the West Bank to “run off and take as many hilltops as possible.” seize,” “because whatever we take now will stay ours.”
That message was repeated this month by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s ultranationalist minister of national security, who told settlers to “run to the hilltops” and settle them during a visit to Evyatar, an illegal hilltop outpost, after the attack on Eli.
But Mr. Netanyahu rejected such calls, saying his government “not only would not support such actions” but would “take strong action against them”.
Mr. Smotrich, the minister overseeing settlement construction, has instructed ministries in Israel to prepare to improve infrastructure in the settlement areas of the West Bank to take in an additional 500,000 settlers. according to Haaretzan Israeli newspaper.
How have the Palestinians reacted in legal terms?
Despite Israel’s strong objections, in late 2014 the Palestinian leadership transferred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to pursue cases against Israel’s settlement policy and military operations.
Shortly thereafter, the court opened a preliminary investigation and announced in 2021 that it would open a formal investigation into allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and by Palestinian militant groups in Israeli-occupied territories in 1967.
Progress is slow.
After the Eli attack sparked a wave of reprisals by extremist Jewish settlers, who rampaged through Palestinian villages and burned property, Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior official of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, urged the international court to expedite the attack. procedure.
“Further procrastination, double standards and entrapment in international institutions and subservience to the political will of major powers are no longer acceptable,” said Mr. al-Sheikh. wrote on Twitter.