Security cabinet approves 13 West Bank ‘neighborhoods’ to become independent settlements
Former illegal outposts to get councils, eased funding; Smotrich: An important step on path of ‘de facto sovereignty’; Palestinian Authority, Hamas condemn move
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
The security cabinet has approved a decision to split off 13 so-called “neighborhoods” of existing West Bank settlements from their “mother settlement,” thereby turning them into 13 independent settlements.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who advanced the security cabinet’s decision in his additional role as a minister in the Defense Ministry, described the move on Sunday as an important step to the path of “de facto [Israeli] sovereignty” over the West Bank.
The “neighborhoods” in question were built many years, and even decades, ago, as illegal settlement outposts, that is, without formal cabinet approval.
Some of these outposts were retroactively legalized by the government by way of approving building plans for the construction of a new neighborhood for an authorized and legal settlement at the site of the illegal outpost, even when, as in many cases, that outpost was several kilometers from the original settlement.
This was all done at a time when Israel was cautious about the diplomatic consequences of settlement expansion, and therefore built the so-called settlements as “neighborhoods” to disguise the reality of settlement expansion.
The decision to now formally split off the neighborhoods as new settlements allows the government to provide budgets for each of them individually, as opposed to designating money for it through its old mother settlements. They will also all get their own municipal councils.
The new settlements were Alon, Haresha, Kerem Reim, Neriya, Migron, Shvut Rachel, Ovnat, Brosh Habika, Leshem, Nofei Nehemia, Tal Menashe, Ibei Hanahal and Gvaot.
Smotrich charged that the previous situation caused those neighborhoods “great difficulties in their daily management,” and that the new step will help them to “advance and develop.”
“We are continuing to lead a revolution in the normalization and formalization of settlements,” the head of the Religious Zionism party wrote on X. “Instead of hiding and apologizing we are raising the flag, building and settling. This is another important step on the way to de facto [Israeli] sovereignty in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].”
Smotrich is open in his desire to permanently stymie the establishment of a Palestinian state and for Israel to annex large swaths of the West Bank and Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority foreign ministry on Sunday condemned the decision to recognize the new settlements as a show of “disregard for international legitimacy and its resolutions.”
The ministry also mentioned the ongoing major Israeli military operation in the northern West Bank, saying it was accompanied by “an unprecedented escalation in the confiscation of Palestinian lands.”
The Hamas terror group also “strongly condemned” the move, as well as Smotrich’s remarks, describing them as proof that settlements were a “racist replacement project.”
While the international community considers all settlements illegal, Israel differentiates between settlement homes built and permitted by the Defense Ministry on land owned by the state, and illegal outposts built without the necessary permits, often on private Palestinian land. In recent years, though, the government has increasingly sought to regulate the wildcat outposts, rather than demolish them.
Earlier this month, the left-wing Peace Now organization reported that a record number of illegal settlement outposts were established in 2024 and the year saw an all-time high for land appropriation.
The organization’s annual review of settlement activity noted that a record 59 illegal outposts, groups of structures not authorized by the government, were set up across the West Bank in 2024, while more land in the territory was declared “state land” — making it available for residential, commercial or agricultural development — than in any year since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.
In 2017, Peace Now published a study called “Unraveling the Mechanism Behind Illegal Outposts,” detailing the methods through which illegal settlement outposts are established, including through the assistance of local settlement municipal authorities and non-governmental organizations, and the failure of law enforcement agencies to investigate such activity.
Last year, Settlement and National Projects Minister Orit Strock — a lawmaker from Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party — told residents of a newly recognized West Bank settlement that she was delighted by the “miracle period” of settlement expansion ushered in by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
AFP contributed to this report
