In a controversial move that has reignited global scrutiny of Israeli territorial policy, the Israeli government announced Tuesday it has formally approved a 1.3 billion shekel ($434 million) budget to construct 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank. According to leading Israeli outlet Ynet, the budget approval was finalized by the country’s security cabinet back in June, but was intentionally kept secret for months over fears of pushback from the United States government. The foundational approval for the 34 settlements themselves was granted in a separate, unpublicized cabinet vote in March, with neither decision disclosed to the public until this week.
With this latest authorization, the total number of settlements approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current far-right government, which took office in late 2022, has climbed to 104. Alongside the new construction projects, the government also signed off on the re-establishment of the Sa-Nur settlement in the northern West Bank. This site was originally evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip, but Israeli settlers have already returned to the location in recent months.
Top government officials from the ruling far-right bloc have celebrated the decision as a landmark step in their planned expansion of Israeli control over the West Bank. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also leads civilian oversight of the occupied West Bank through the Defense Ministry, spearheaded the budget measure and framed it as a core achievement of what his faction calls a “settlement revolution.” Smotrich described the approval as a critical security and strategic decision, tying the expansion to his long-stated goal of blocking the creation of an independent Palestinian state, which he referred to as a “terror state” that would threaten Israeli sovereignty. “We are passing, one after the other, budgetary decisions that fund roads, infrastructure, and now also buildings and caravans,” Smotrich said, confirming that construction on the new settlements would launch as early as this coming summer.
Settlement Minister Orit Strook, a fellow member of Smotrich’s Religious Zionist party who resides in an existing West Bank settlement, went even further in praising the move, calling it “the greatest Zionist-settlement move since the establishment of the state.” Strook claimed that no comparable pro-settlement decision had been made in the entire history of the Zionist movement, adding that the government’s agenda aims to ensure “no point remains without a settlement” across the occupied territory.
Just days earlier, Smotrich and Netanyahu signed a separate landmark umbrella agreement with the Samaria Regional Council, committing 8.5 billion shekels ($2.5 billion) to upgrade and expand infrastructure across the northern West Bank. Israeli daily Israel Hayom reported that this is the first time an Israeli government has formalized such a direct agreement with a regional settlement council. The deal allocates funding for 18 previously approved new settlements, the construction of roughly 12,000 additional homes in existing settlement blocs, and broad upgrades to local roads and public services.
However, the settlement expansion push has drawn sharp criticism both from within Israel and from the international community. All Israeli settlements built in the West Bank are universally recognized as illegal under international law, a position formally upheld by the International Court of Justice and endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the global community. Domestic Israeli anti-settlement advocacy group Peace Now has lambasted the new measures, describing the recent 8.5 billion shekel infrastructure deal as “a fire sale of the State of Israel.” In a formal statement, the organization argued: “Not only is the government thumbing its nose at millions of Israelis and plundering their money for the benefit of a narrow settler sector – it is digging, with its own hands, the diplomatic and security pit in which the State of Israel may end up buried.”
Earlier this month, Peace Now published a comprehensive report documenting the current government’s rapid acceleration of de facto annexation of the occupied West Bank. The report found that over the past three years, the government has approved more than 100 new settlements and formalized 185 unapproved settlement outposts. These outposts now exert control over more than 1.1 million dunams of land, equal to roughly 18 percent of the total area of the occupied West Bank. The report also added that Israeli settlers, backed by the Israeli military, have forcibly displaced 118 distinct Palestinian communities from their land in the territory to make way for expansion.