Israeli officials have tentatively agreed to legalize five Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move that could further inflame tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and draw the ire of the international community, but one that advances the expansionist agenda of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government.
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has agreed to release funds he has been withholding from the financially strapped Palestinian Authority, which administers some West Bank areas under Israeli military rule, in exchange for strengthening Israeli settlements in the territory, his office said on Thursday.
The tentative agreement would ease some of the financial pressure on the Palestinian Authority but would officially tighten Israel’s hold on the West Bank, further complicating any future effort to reach an agreement on a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis.
Much of the international community views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, and many of the outposts are illegal under Israeli law, too, but are tolerated by the government. Many whose creation violated Israeli law were later legitimized by the Israeli government, granting them formal access to services like running water, electricity, building permits and funding.
Still, outposts have grown with the tacit agreement of the government for decades. Mr. Netanyahu last year decided to ease the process for approving new settlement construction, transferring authority from the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, to Mr. Smotrich, who believes Israel should annex the West Bank and rule it permanently.
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What outposts are being approved by Israel?
The details and timeline for legalizing the five settlements were not immediately clear. Among the settlements that Mr. Smotrich said would be legalized:
Evyatar: A controversial outpost on Jabal Subeih, a hill near Nablus in the northern West Bank, it is named for Evyatar Borovski, a settler killed by a Palestinian in 2013. In 2021, after the outpost rapidly expanded and incited Palestinian protests, settlers were ordered to evacuate. But they soon returned with the government’s tacit approval.
Givat Assaf: Located in the central West Bank and settled by religious nationalists in 2002, it was named after Assaf Hershkovitz, a settler killed by a Palestinian. The Israeli advocacy group Peace Now sued for demolition of homes there in 2007, arguing that they were established on private Palestinian property. The government in 2013 said it was considering legalizing the settlement, drawing the ire of American officials. In 2014, four homes shown to have been built on private Palestinian land were demolished under court order.
Sde Ephraim: Squatters established this outpost in 2018 on a hilltop near the Palestinian village of Ras Karkar, northwest of Ramallah. Settlers and villagers have clashed repeatedly here. This month, the Israeli military said that attackers had set fire to a trailer on the farm outpost.
Adorayim: This outpost comprises about two dozen religious-nationalist families in the area of Hebron and was established in 2017.
Heletz: A newly established farming area, it is located amid a cluster of settlements south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem called Gush Etzion.
Are the settlements legal?
Most of the world considers settlements to be illegal under international law. The United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice have all said that Israeli settlements on the West Bank violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from moving its people into occupied territory. The statute that established the International Criminal Court in 1998 classifies such transfers as war crimes.
The United Nations in 1947 approved a partition creating a Jewish state and a Palestinian one that would include the West Bank, and put Jerusalem under international control. But after the first Arab-Israeli war, Jordan took control of the West Bank, and Jerusalem became divided between Israel and Jordan.
In the 1967 war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and occupied the West Bank, which it says is disputed territory whose fate should be determined in negotiations. Soon after, it began to permit settlements there.
Palestinians have long argued that the settlements are a creeping annexation enforced by armed settlers and the Israeli military, carving territory that should become a Palestinian state into an unworkable patchwork, and steadily pushing Arabs out of their homes and farms.
Under Israeli law, legal settlements must be built on land held by the state, must have government building permits and must be established by a government resolution.
Under the Oslo accords, signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s, both sides agreed that the status of Israeli settlements would be resolved by negotiation, a prospect that grows dimmer with each new outpost.
The U.N. General Assembly last year asked the International Court of Justice to give an opinion on the legal consequences “from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory.”
How many settlements are there?
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Some settlement construction has continued under every Israeli government for decades. As of last year, more than 130 settlements had been built with Israeli government permission since 1967.
More than 100 unauthorized settlement outposts have been erected since the 1990s, and the Israeli authorities are working on legalizing many of them retroactively.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank — not counting more than 200,000 in East Jerusalem — alongside more than 2.7 million Palestinians. Some of the settlements are home to religious Zionists who believe that the area is their biblical birthright. Many secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews also moved there, largely for cheaper housing.
This year, the Israeli government had designated a record amount of land, about 6,000 acres, as eligible for settlement by March, another signal of Mr. Smotrich’s intent to deepen the Israeli hold on the West Bank.
In March, the U.N. human rights chief, Volker Türk, condemned the rapid expansion of settlements after a U.N. report showed a “dramatic increase in the intensity, severity and regularity of Israeli settler and state violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, particularly since 7 October, 2023, which is accelerating Palestinians’ displacement from their land.”
Tor Wennesland, the U.N.’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, on Tuesday said that signs of expedited settlement and legalization of outposts undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
That appears to be the goal for Mr. Smotrich, who adamantly opposes Palestinian statehood. He has said that he will legalize additional outposts in response to any nation that announces recognition of a Palestinian state.
In the last two months, Spain, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia and Armenia have formally recognized an independent Palestinian state. In a social media post on Thursday, Mr. Smotrich indicated that the latest settlement legalization was a response to those decisions.
“We’ll continue developing the settlements to maintain Israel’s security and to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger our existence,” he said.
Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, the head of Israel’s Central Command, which is responsible for the West Bank, has said that since Mr. Smotrich took office the effort to clamp down on illegal settlement construction has dwindled “to the point where it has disappeared.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
— Ephrat Livni
