Celebratory music blasting from loudspeakers mixed with the sounds of construction, almost drowning out calls to prayer from a mosque in the Palestinian town across the West Bank valley.
Orthodox Jewish women wearing colorful head coverings and with babies on their hips shared platters of fresh vegetables, as soldiers encircled the hilltop in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, keeping guard.
The scene Monday reflected the culmination of settlers’ long campaign to turn a site overlooking the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour into a settlement. Over the years, they fended off plans to build a hospital for Palestinian children on the land, always holding to the hope it would one day become theirs.
That moment is now, they say.
After two decades of efforts, it took just a month for their new settlement, called Yatziv, to go from an unauthorized outpost of a few mobile homes to a fully recognized settlement. Fittingly, the new settlement’s name means “stable” in Hebrew.
“We are standing stable here in Israel,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told The Associated Press at Monday’s inauguration ceremony. “We’re going to be here forever. We will never establish a Palestinian state here.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich watches Rabbi Amiel Sternberg affix a mezuzah in the newly-legalized Jewish settlement, Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, January 19, 2026. (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)
With settler leaders like Smotrich holding key positions in government and establishing close ties with the Trump administration, settlers are feeling the wind at their backs.
Smotrich, who has been in charge of settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank.
The international community — with the notable exception of the United States under President Donald Trump — considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law. Israel, which took control of the area in the 1967 Six Day War, disputes that position, citing historic ties to the region and a security imperative in holding on to it.
The settlers’ impact on the ground is clear, with Palestinians saying the ever-expanding construction hems them in and makes it nearly impossible to establish a viable future independent state, which they seek in the West Bank.
With Netanyahu and Trump, settlers feel emboldened
Settlers had long set their sights on the hilltop, thanks to its position in a line of settlements surrounding Jerusalem and because they said it was significant to Jewish history. But they put up the boxy prefab homes in November because days earlier, Palestinian attackers had stabbed an Israeli to death at a nearby junction.
The attack created an impetus to justify the settlement, Gush Etzion Regional Council Chairman Yaron Rosenthal told the AP. With the election of the current far-right government in late 2022, Trump’s return to office last year, and the November attack, conditions were ripe for settlers to make their move, he said.
“We understood that there was an opportunity,” he said. “But we didn’t know it would happen so quickly. Now there is the right political constellation for this to happen.”
An Israeli settler and her child are seen in the newly legalized Jewish settlement of Yatziv, adjacent to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, January 19, 2026. (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)
Smotrich announced approval of the outpost, along with 18 others, on December 21. That capped 20 years of effort, said Nadia Matar, a settler activist.
“Shdema was nearly lost to us,” said Matar, using the name of an Israeli military base at the site. “What prevented that outcome was perseverance.”
Back in 2006, settlers were infuriated upon hearing that government was in talks with the US to build a Palestinian children’s hospital on the land, said Hagit Ofran, a director at Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, especially as the US Agency for International Development was funding a “peace park” at the base of the hill.
The mayor of Beit Sahour urged the US Consulate to pressure Israel to begin hospital construction, while settlers began demonstrations at the site, calling on the government to quash the project, according to consulate files obtained through WikiLeaks.
It was “interesting” that settlers had “no religious, legal, or… security claim to that land,” wrote consulate staffer Matt Fuller at the time, in an email he shared with the AP. “They just don’t want the Palestinians to have it — and for a hospital no less — a hospital that would mean fewer permits for entry to Jerusalem for treatment.”
The hospital was never built. The site was converted into a military base after the Benjamin Netanyahu government came to power in 2009. From there, settlers quickly established a foothold by creating a makeshift cultural center at the site, putting on lectures, readings, and exhibits.
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert during an interview with The Associated Press in his office in Tel Aviv, Israel, May 22, 2025. (Ariel Schalit/AP)
Speaking to the AP, Ehud Olmert, who was prime minister at the time the hospital was under discussion, said that was the tipping point.
“Once it is military installation, it is easier then to change its status into a new outpost, a new settlement and so on,” he said.
Olmert said Netanyahu — who has served as prime minister nearly uninterrupted since then — was “committed to entirely different political directions from the ones that I had,” he said. “They didn’t think about cooperation with the Palestinians.”
Palestinians say the land is theirs
The continued legalization of settlements and spiking settler violence — which rose by 27 percent in 2025, according to the military — have cemented a fearful status quo for West Bank Palestinians.
The land now home to Yatziv was originally owned by Palestinians from Beit Sahour, said the town’s mayor, Elias Isseid.
“These lands have been owned by families from Beit Sahour since ancient times,” he said.
An Israeli soldier stands guard during the inauguration ceremony for the newly legalized Jewish settlement of Yatziv, near the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, in the West Bank, January 19, 2026. (Ohad Zwigenberg/AP)
Isseid worries more land loss is to come. Yatziv is the latest in a line of Israeli settlements to be constructed around Beit Sahour, all of which are connected by a main highway that runs to Jerusalem without entering Palestinian villages. The new settlement “poses a great danger to our children, our families,” he said.
A bypass road, complete with a new yellow gate, climbs up to Yatziv. The peace park stands empty.