West Bank: Israel approves 19 new settlements; UN flags record expansion

Israel’s security cabinet on Sunday approved the establishment of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, continuing its expansion in the Palestinian territory.

With this, the total number of approved settlements has risen to 69, according to a statement by Israel's finance minister Bezalel Smotrich.

“On the ground, we are blocking the establishment of a Palestinian terror state,” Smotrich said while announcing the move. “We will continue to develop, build, and settle the land of our ancestral heritage, with faith in the justice of our path,” he added.




Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and violence in the region has sharply increased since the Gaza war began in October 2023, following Hamas’s attack on Israel.

Smotrich’s office also said the newly approved settlements are located in what it described as “highly strategic” areas. It said two of them, Ganim and Kadim in the northern West Bank, will be re-established after being dismantled around two decades ago.

According to a recent United Nations report, Israel's settlement expansion has reached its highest level since 2017, when the UN began tracking the data. More than 500,000 Israelis currently live in the West Bank, alongside about three million Palestinians.

“These figures represent a sharp increase compared to previous years,” UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres recently said, as quoted by news agency AFP.

Israel's move comes even as the United States has urged Israel and Hamas to move forward with the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire, which took effect on October 10. The US-brokered plan includes a possible pathway towards a Palestinian state.

US president Donald Trump also recently warned Israel against annexing the West Bank. “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened,” Trump said in a recent interview with Time magazine.