by Gassam Muaddi, published on Mondoweiss,
The Israeli government’s decision last Thursday to create 22 new settlements in the West Bank was reported as regular news in most mainstream media. Although it received official condemnations from the UK, Finland, and some Arab states, the decision passed with absolutely no practical consequence for Israel, despite European threats to impose sanctions.
On the other hand, within Israeli politics, the decision was regarded as far from ordinary and received with widespread fanfare. The Israeli Defense Ministry called the decision “historic,” while the Defense Minister, Israel Katz, said that the decision “reinforces Israel’s control over Judea and Samaria,” Israel’s term for the occupied West Bank.” Israel’s hardline Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, celebrated the move as “a great day for the settlement movement and an important day for the State of Israel.”
The Israeli celebration is understandable, being one of the largest settlement expansion decisions in decades: it simultaneously sanctioned the rebuilding of evacuated settlements that had been dismantled in 2005, legalized already-existing outposts that had hitherto been deemed illicit under Israeli law, and on top of all this, approved the building of additional settlements.
The geographical distribution of this planned network of settlements, some of it already in existence, will ensure Israel’s grip on the West Bank is all-encompassing. The sprawling web includes four settlements in the Ramallah area in the central West Bank, four in Jenin in the north, four more in Hebron in the south, two in Nablus in the center-north, one in Salfit in the northeast, three in Jericho in the southern Jordan Valley, three more across the Jordan Valley itself, and one in East Jerusalem.
In short, it is annexation in all but name.
The decision follows years of previous steps leading up to it, which have escalated dramatically in recent months.
Last Thursday’s approval of 22 new settlements should be seen specifically as a follow-up move to an earlier decision made by former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant exactly a year ago, which repealed the 2005 Israeli Disengagement Law that led to the dismantlement of four settlements in the Jenin area in the northern West Bank, alongside the evacuation of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip. The four dismantled Jenin settlements are part of the newly-approved 22 settlements.
Over a year in the making
In early April, Israel announced a series of new settlement infrastructure projects across the West Bank that would essentially split the West Bank in two. The projects laid the groundwork for the expansion of Israeli settlement outposts after their expected legalization, focusing on the complete separation of Palestinian traffic from Israeli settler traffic by building new roads for Palestinians that would bypass areas threatened by Israeli confiscation, especially in Jerusalem’s E1 area. This would effectively render swathes of land in the West Bank inaccessible for Palestinian vehicles, and would make it nearly impossible for Palestinian communities in the area, such as the community of Khan al-Ahmar, from reaching their homes by car.
Moreover, earlier last month, the Israeli government decided to unfreeze the land property registration process in Area C, which Israel froze upon its occupation of the West Bank in 1967. The decision would strip recognition of property deeds issued by the Palestinian Authority in Area C, which makes up over 60% of the West Bank as part of the Oslo Accords, and where the PA has no institutional presence. This Israeli move would treat West Bank lands as a part of “Israel proper,” allowing the registration of property deeds before Israeli civil government institutions and opening the door to turning Palestinian public lands, or lands whose registration process was incomplete on the eve of the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, into Israeli state lands.
Again, in short, annexation, in all but name.
Context: all-out assault on the West Bank
These decisions have been accompanied by the escalation of the demolition of Palestinian properties in the West Bank and increasing settler violence on the ground. According to data collected by the UN Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israel demolished 1,768 Palestinian structures in 2024 alone, marking the highest number of demolitions in the West Bank since 2009.
According to OCHA, 43.1% of these demolished properties were inhabited homes, 26.4% were agricultural structures, and 12.9% were other types of livelihood structures. The demolitions left 4,265 Palestinians homeless and affected over 165,000 people. Since the beginning of 2025, Israel has already demolished 819 Palestinian properties in the West Bank.
Simultaneously, a few days before the Israeli government decision, Israeli settlers launched yet another wave of violent attacks against Palestinian villages. Settlers set fire to farmlands in the village of Mughayyer, torched a farming cabin in the town of Turmusayya, blocked the entrance of the village of Sinjil, and led to the ethnic cleansing and total dismantlement of generations-old Bedouin communities, most recently the people of Mughayyir al-Deir — all in the eastern Ramallah countryside.
This combination of Israeli state and non-state action points in one direction: the destruction of Palestinians’ means to life and their replacement by Israeli settlements. As Israel drags on its endless onslaught in Gaza, it precipitates its steps to exploit the ongoing war to advance its colonization project of Palestinian lands in the West Bank, racing to fulfill Smotrich’s pledge that 2025 would be “the year of imposing Israeli sovereignty” on the West Bank.