In another major expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli cabinet approved on Thursday the legalization and establishment of numerous settler outposts, according to an Israeli source familiar with the matter.

The decision authorizes 19 outposts across the West Bank, including two that were evacuated in the 2005 disengagement plan.

Reacting to news of the decision, Palestinian presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said, “All Israeli settlement activity is illegal and constitutes a violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions,” according to Palestinian official news agency WAFA.

Outposts, in addition to being illegal under international law, are also illegal under Israeli law. Settlers establish outposts with the goal of receiving authorization for the illegal building in the future. Many of the newly authorized settlements are deep within the West Bank.

Some of the outposts have existed for more than 20 years and are home to dozens of families. Others are in locations in the West Bank that settlers view as strategic positions to expand and establish new settlements in the future.

See also:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/13/middleeast/israel-expansion-settlements-legalizes-outposts-latam-intl

Posted by Naurgul

4 comments

  1. Wow, Hamas is making Israel take the West Bank from the Palestinians again! This is unreal somebody needs to stop Hamas from making it like this. Is it anti-semetic if I criticize the settlements in the West Bank and soon to be Syria?

  2. No way. You mean they continued to do exactly what they’ve been doing, despite what they said to the contrary? *Crazy*

  4. Some context:

    The current Israeli government, which began in 2022, has approved close to 70 settlements. Before that, no new settlements were approved for decades, with the last ones approved in the 1990s. Only nine settlements had been approved in Dec 2022 prior to the Oct 7 war (all of which were established illegally in the 90’s/00’s), with the rest being legalized after the war began. This does not include expansions of previously existing settlements (building new housing) – between 2017 and 2022, for example, an average if 12,800 new housing units were built annually in already existing legal towns. That number has since increased, with a high of 47,000 new units being planned in legal towns in 2025. There are 500,000 Israelis living in the West Bank, many of which have been there for multiple generations now since resettlement began after 1967.

    Some opinion:

    Settlements can only happen if there is popular support for them in Israel, which only happens when Israel is attacked. Every year that passes without peace will just mean more territory ceded. The advent of war in Gaza post Oct 7 2023 has only sped up new settlement construction. The only thing that had paused new settlements in the West Bank was an era of relative peace beginning with the Oslo Accords. More war will mean more settlements, and it is in the Palestinian people’s best interests for there to be peace rather than war. Oct 7 was a strategic mistake of catastrophic proportions, since it not only decimated all of Israel’s enemies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Assad, Houthis, Iran, etc.) but also gave popular cover for the Israeli government to legalize more settlements in the West Bank. Every time Israel is attacked, it wins, and then takes land in retaliation.

    Here’s hoping the fighting stops, new settlements stop, and people can just exist in peace.

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