Last Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced that Israeli settlements in the West Bank would continue to be built under the current government, as they had been under the previous one. "Definitely, we will continue to build there as well," he said during a joint news conference in Berlin with his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock. Despite international condemnation, the new Israeli far-right government has recently granted approval for over 7,000 housing units in West Bank settlements and legalized numerous outposts.
After two days of discussions, the subcommittee for settlements approved the advancement of 7,157 housing units through the approval of 43 building plans in 37 settlements and outposts (including one industrial zone). For comparison, in all of 2022, a total of 4,427 housing units were advanced through deposit and final approval, whereas in 2021, 3,645 housing units were advanced accordingly.
The announcement of the settlement approvals came just days after the U.N. Security Council passed a statement strongly criticizing Israeli settlement construction on occupied lands claimed by the Palestinians. The U.S., Israel’s closest ally, blocked what would have been an even tougher legally binding resolution, with diplomats saying they had received Israeli assurances of refraining from unilateral acts for six months.
The resolution would have reaffirmed "that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law." It would have been embarrassing for the U.S. if it had been forced to use its veto power at the UNSC to protect Israel, as it often has in the past.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu turned his back on his promise, and his new coalition officially granted Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler leader, authority over settlement construction where he and other far-right ministers plan to spend billions expanding and investing in settlements.
The series of agreements that laid the foundation for the coalition’s establishment pledged to significantly expand settlements and included a commitment to annex large parts of the West Bank, where the government’s guiding principles declare the “Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right” to live and develop.
On their part, settlement critics described Netanyahu’s move as a wink-and-nod policy traced back to efforts by successive governments to deflect international pressure on settlements and an effort to entrench Israeli rule over the West Bank and grab more occupied land that Palestinians seek for a future state. Strings of strategically located outposts have changed the landscape of the territory – threatening to make a future Palestinian state little more than a shriveled constellation of disconnected enclaves.
“We see this as a very big move toward annexation,” said Ziv Stahl, director of the Israeli rights group Yesh Din. “Cementing the existence of these places blocks any hope for Palestinians to ever get their land back.”
To avoid international censure, Israel repeatedly promised to dismantle the rogue outposts – but only two major ones were evacuated while others were strategically registered as new neighborhoods of established settlements.
On the other hand, Israel is seeking to once again advance the highly controversial E1 settlement project that would bisect Palestinian contiguity in the West Bank. According to Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, the planning committee, that granted approvals for some of the new settlements in the West Bank, scheduled a meeting next month to discuss plans to develop east of Jerusalem, the strategic area – known as E1.
The plan to build 3,412 homes in a new neighborhood of Ma’ale Adumim has been characterized by critics as a "doomsday" settlement, as it would divide the West Bank into northern and southern regions. It would also prevent the development of a Palestinian metropolis that connects East Jerusalem to Bethlehem and Ramallah, which the Palestinians have long hoped would serve as the foundation of their future state.
The previous government sought to hold the objections committee hearing on at least three occasions but agreed to put it off each time amid pressure from the U.S. and European countries. The U.S. has blocked the project in the past, which would largely bisect the West Bank and which critics say would make it impossible to establish a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The international community and the Security Council consider settlement construction illegal or illegitimate and an obstacle to peace. Over 700,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem – territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for a future independent state. As early as 1980, Security Council Resolution 465 called on Israel "to dismantle the existing settlements and, in particular, to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction, and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem."
The U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory, Michael Lynk, continuously calls on the international community to designate the creation of Israeli settlements as a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Lynk says that the Israeli settlements violate the absolute prohibition against the transfer by an occupying power of parts of its civilian population into occupied territory. The international community designated this practice as a war crime when it adopted the Rome Statute in 1998.
"For Israel, the settlements serve two related purposes. One is to guarantee that the occupied territory will remain under Israeli control in perpetuity. The second purpose is to ensure that there will never be a genuine Palestinian state," Lynk told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
"These are exactly the reasons why the international community agreed to prohibit the practice of settler implantation when it created the Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949 and the Rome Statute in 1998."
In a rare meeting hosted by Jordan's King Abdullah recently in Aqaba with the attendance of Jordanian, Egyptian, Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. officials to halt the recent spiral of violence between the Israelis and Palestinians in which settlements were among the central issues, Israel agreed to "stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months and to stop authorization of any outposts for six months," said the statement after the five-way meeting.
Hours after the joint statement was released, Netanyahu rushed to deny a settlement freeze and tweeted that "the building and authorization in Judea and Samaria will continue according to the original planning and building schedule, with no change," using the biblical term for the West Bank. "There is not and will not be any freeze," he continued.
Furthermore, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi also insisted that "there is no change in Israeli policy.”
“In the coming months, Israel will authorize nine outposts and approve 9,500 new housing units in Judea and Samaria," Hanegbi said in a statement. "There is no settlement freeze or change in the status quo on the Temple Mount, and there is no limitation on (Israeli Defense Forces) IDF activities."
Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich, who is also a minister in the Defense Ministry, immediately dismissed the results of the summit as meaningless, noting that nothing substantive had occurred.
"I have no idea what they talked about or didn't talk about in Jordan," tweeted Smotrich.
“I heard about this superfluous conference from the media just like you. But one thing I do know: There will not be a freeze in the construction and development of settlements, not even for one day (this, on my authority).”
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir concurred, "Whatever happened in Jordan if it happened, will remain in Jordan."
All of these statements and actions clearly show that Israel will not make any substantive changes to its settlement policy, and without strong international action against Israeli settlement policy, Netanyahu's government will continue with its settlement activities of construction, expansion, legalization of outposts, dangerously annex more Palestinian lands, and destroy any remaining viability of a two-state solution.
