Colonial Settlement Announcements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Overshadowed by its ongoing war in Gaza, the Israeli government has intensified its settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, racing with time to establish as many facts on the ground as possible to prejudice the final status of the OPT in flagrant contravention of international legitimacy, UN resolutions pertinent to the Question of Palestine, and the signed agreements between Israel and the PLO in 1993 onward.

The PLO Negotiations Affairs Department recently released a report detailing Israeli colonial and settlement activities in the OPT throughout the first half of 2024 . The report noted that by the end of June 2024, approximately 740,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank settlements. Of those, approximately 240,000 live in what Israel defines as Jerusalem neighborhoods while they were built on Palestinian land belonging to East Jerusalem that Israel annexed after the June 1967 war. All UN Resolutions, including UNSC Resolution 2334 of 23 December 2016, have declared illegal under international law all Israeli settlements and every other action or measure Israel took in the Arab territories it conquered in the 1967 war.

The detailed NAD report listed all orders and directives issued by the Israeli government between January and June 2024, with most taken directly by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also bears a ministerial status in the defense ministry. Smotrich has been using his powers to radically change the status quo that has characterized Israel’s military command in the West Bank. He assumed powers previously exclusive to the Civil Administration, a West Bank military command body in charge of civic affairs, including the Palestinian Authority areas A, as defined by the Oslo Accord.

Smotrich and his ally, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, belong to the extreme right-wing camp in Israel whose agenda is to blow up every chance of reaching a political settlement with the Palestinian people and force or intrigue the Palestinians to leave Palestine and seek refuge elsewhere in the world.

Since the formation of the incumbent government in Israel almost a year and a half ago, the presence of these two ministers was Israeli PM Netanyahu’s alibi for promoting his agenda of destroying the Oslo Process, starting with his first term as prime minister in 1996, when he was elected in the aftermath of former PM Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination.

Every time Netanyahu came under domestic or world fire for his government’s policies against the Palestinians in OPT, he would blame everything on these two ministers whose resignations could endanger his government. Israelis and others strongly believe that Netanyahu has become a hostage of these two ministers whom he brought into the government to fulfill his anti-Palestinian plans.

During the first seven months of 2024, Israel approved the advancement of 26,500 housing units in dozens of settlements throughout the OPT, including 16,132 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem. Moreover, Israel declared as “state land” a total area of 23,700 dunums in the Jordan Valley’s Governorate of Jericho.

On 27 June, the Settlement Administration under Smotrich decided to establish five new settlements in isolated areas by legalizing five outposts that the previous governments in Israel refused to approve. All Israeli settlements built in the territories that Israel occupied in the June 1967 war, including the Syrian Golan Heights, are illegal under international law and UN resolutions pertinent to the Palestinian cause.

As the international community watched but did nothing, Smotrich announced on 9 June a series of government directives that practically meant annexing parts of the West Bank. He allocated funds for existing settlements and expanded outposts under the disguise of several budgetary categories, including security, infrastructure, and constructing new roads connecting Jewish settlements but denying any access to Palestinians.

At present, Israeli settlers run farms over a total area of 243,000 dunums, 7% of the total area of Zone C under the Oslo Accord, which is under Israel’s military and civil control. The army declared one-third of this area as firing zones, but settlers were granted the right to use it for their benefit.

In Jerusalem, Israel has prepared at least 27 plans to build a total of 16,132 housing units in the so-called Jerusalem neighborhoods, a euphemism Israel uses to hide the fact that those settlements were built on occupied Palestinian land across the Green Line that existed until the eve of the 1967 war.