Ramallah- While the Israeli military machine continues its war of annihilation in the Gaza Strip since October 2023, it is waging another war in the West Bank, driven by settlement expansion, devouring land, and deploying more military obstacles and barriers.
Official Palestinian data indicate that the war in the West Bank is moving in several directions: establishing more settlement outposts, arming settlers, confiscating lands, studying and approving dozens of settlement plans with modern infrastructure, in parallel with attacks on Palestinians, and building demolitions in Area C, estimated at approximately 60% of the West Bank is subject to full Israeli control, and legislation to dominate and impose sovereignty over it.
In his reading of the successive and simultaneous Israeli steps, an expert in settlement affairs told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that what is happening is establishing a settler state in the West Bank, with the Palestinian areas being transformed into islands administered by local authorities linked to a central government in Ramallah.
Settlement during war
According to data from the Palestinian government’s Wall and Settlement Resistance Authority, what is new in Israeli measures in the year of war is the acceleration of all plans and policies, whether settlement construction, land confiscation, or demolition of Palestinian buildings.
The Authority’s data indicate that 52 thousand dunams (a dunam is equal to a thousand square metres) were seized during the year of war, and the establishment of 12 buffer zones around the settlements, while the Israeli planning authorities studied 182 structural plans for the purpose of building a total of 23 thousand and 267 settlement units on an area of 14 thousand dunums. Of these, 6,300 units have been approved.
The structural plans were distributed across the Holy City Governorate with 65 structural plans.
As for the most prominent settlement outposts after October 7, most of them were distributed in Hebron Governorate (8 outposts), Ramallah (6 outposts), Bethlehem (4 outposts), and 3 other outposts in Nablus and then the rest of the governorates, in addition to constructing 7 roads to facilitate movement. Settlers and linking outposts to existing settlements.
The Commission stated that the occupying state decided to regularize (legalize) 11 settlement outposts and transform them into colonies or settlement neighborhoods affiliated with existing colonies, and referred a total of 9 other outposts for legalization procedures.
She indicated that the number of permanent and temporary checkpoints, including military or dirt gates and barriers, that divide the Palestinian territories and impose restrictions on the movement of individuals and goods, amounted to 872 military checkpoints and gates, of which more than 156 gates were created after October 7, 2023.
Settlers attacks
As documented by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, since October 2023, there has been a significant increase in attacks launched by settlers on Palestinian population centers in the West Bank.
The office documented 1,536 attacks as of October 24, of which 152 attacks resulted in Palestinian casualties, and 1,226 attacks damaged property belonging to Palestinians. While the Wall Authority says that 11 Palestinians were killed by settlers’ bullets.
Since October 7, 2023, 285 Palestinian families, comprising 1,669 individuals, including 807 children, have been displaced from Bedouin and herding communities across the West Bank, mainly due to attacks by settlers and access restrictions, according to the UN office.
It also demolished 1,814 facilities and homes throughout the occupied West Bank since that date, resulting in the displacement of about 4,500 Palestinians.
According to data from the Israeli “Peace Now” organization, 43 new outposts have been established since October 2023, most of them agricultural outposts, compared to an annual average of 7 outposts over nearly three decades before that.
The Israeli organization added that the government funded these hotspots with about $7.5 million last year, and allocated $20 million to them this year.
Infrastructure and weapons
In his reading of settlement expansion, since the current Israeli government took over its responsibilities in late 2022 and during the war, settlement affairs expert Suhail Khaliliyah says – to Tel Aviv Tribune Net – that the current government did not deny that it is a settler par excellence and therefore the issue of accelerating settlement projects and related laws was possible and expected.
He added that those who hold the keys to the Israeli government are people from a settlement background. “Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who controls the Civil Administration, which is the workforce of the occupation government in the West Bank, has canceled many of the stages and procedures facing settlement and has facilitated and accelerated approvals for these projects.”
Through his presence in his position, Smotrich was able to bypass many approvals and provide the required budgets to begin the basic operations of these projects in the West Bank and Jerusalem, consolidating settlement, displacing Palestinians and demolishing their homes in return.
Khaliliya pointed out that about 1,400 Palestinian homes and facilities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, have been demolished from the beginning of 2024 until the end of this month, an increase estimated at about 70% over what it was before this government, that is, in 2022.
He continued that Smotrich dedicated the settlement project and gave open budgets, specifically the bypass roads and “developed” them to establish separation, and “established special road networks for the settlers and others for the Palestinians to strengthen his settlement project.”
The Palestinian expert spoke of an unprecedented increase in the confiscation of lands and declaring them state lands or natural reserves to separate the Palestinians from their land.
The settler state
In light of these facts, Khaliliya says that everything that is happening is establishing a project for a state for settlers in the West Bank, whose army will be made up of settlers whom the government began arming since its formation.
He continued that arming the settlers “created a parallel army supported by the occupation army to establish a state in most of Area C, with the aim of breaking any idea and any project for a two-state solution that the international community is still talking about.”
In numbers, Khaliliya says that there are 204 settlements and 270 settlement outposts, “legitimate and illegal.” In the West Bank, According to the classification of Israeli law, they are collectively inhabited by approximately 960,000 settlers.
The area on which settlement construction is being built is estimated at about 210 square kilometers, while the area of the structural plans for the settlements reaches 560 square kilometers.
He added that the areas of influence of the existing settlement outposts and those under establishment exceed 300 square kilometers.
According to the Palestinian expert, “If there is no international movement to establish controls and curb the settlement project, the settlers will seize 40% of the West Bank, which constitutes 70% of the area of Area C, and establish their state, and the remainder of the Palestinian areas will become mini-states and islands separated from each other.” It has separate governments run by a federal government in Ramallah.”
