Israel’s stealth annexation: Thousands of West Bank units approved

The Higher Planning Council, affiliated with the Israeli Civil Administration (Tel Aviv’s military-administrative arm in the West Bank), approved a plan for 764 new housing units across several settlements.

Israel’s Channel 7 reported that the decision includes: 478 units in the Hashmonaim settlement, 230 units in Betar Illit, and 56 units in Givat Zeev, all located in the central West Bank.

Since the current Benjamin Netanyahu cabinet took office in late 2022, the West Bank has witnessed an unprecedented surge in settlement construction. According to Channel 7, the current cabinet has approved the creation or expansion of 51,370 housing units in settlements over the past two years alone, a figure that exceeds the scale of settlement plans in previous decades.

According to the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ), by mid-November 2024, the Israeli cabinet had proposed construction of over 26,000 new housing units on approximately 30,000 dunams of West Bank land. The institute reported that from the start of 2025 until the end of October, 194 settlement plans were registered, the majority of which were concentrated in East Jerusalem.

Data from the Israeli Movement Peace Now indicates that over 700,000 settlers currently live in the West Bank, including about 250,000 in East Jerusalem.

The United Nations has repeatedly emphasized that settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal, and the current trajectory undermines the possibility of a two-state solution. Despite these warnings, the Israeli cabinet continues to expand its control over large areas of the West Bank.

In line with this, the Israeli parliament approved a preliminary draft law on October 22 to formally annex the West Bank, an action that sparked widespread regional and international condemnation.