Israel accelerates West Bank settlement expansion, drawing global condemnation

Benjamin Netanyahu stood in a West Bank settlement last September and said the words plainly: "We are going to fulfill our promise that there will be no Palestinian state. This place belongs to us." He was signing an agreement to expand construction in E1, a stretch of land just east of Jerusalem that Israel has avoided building on for decades, despite controlling it since 1967. Last month, the government opened tenders for roughly 1,200 new homes on that same strategically vital territory. The announcement triggered swift condemnation from the United Nations, which called the plans an "existential threat" to Palestinian statehood, and from five major Western democracies—the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Canada—who called the expansion "unacceptable" and warned it would "drive a wedge through the West Bank."

The speed of settlement growth has become difficult to ignore. Since Netanyahu returned to power in 2022 at the head of a right-wing coalition aligned with settler interests, construction has accelerated sharply. Satellite imagery analyzed by BBC Verify shows roughly 185 new buildings erected in the settlement of Tzofim since 2022 alone. Around Kochav Hashahar, the existing settlement has expanded in multiple directions, with new roads, houses, and outposts spreading across surrounding Palestinian land. Across the territory, Israel has built approximately 160 settlements housing 700,000 Jews since 1967. But the pace has quickened further since the Gaza war began in October 2023.

What makes E1 different is its geography and what it would accomplish. The proposed development would effectively split the West Bank in two, isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of the territory and cutting the north from the south. This fragmentation would make it nearly impossible to establish a contiguous Palestinian state—the kind that could connect Ramallah, East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem into a functioning political entity. Peace Now, an Israeli organization that opposes settlements and has challenged the plans in court, believes the government is rushing to sign contracts with construction companies before October elections, calculating that a future government would find it far harder to reverse work already underway.

The expansion goes beyond settlements themselves. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister and a far-right ideologue, now oversees much of the West Bank's civilian administration. Under his watch, the government has funded over a billion shekels—roughly $360 million—in new road construction, explicitly designed to "strengthen their grip on the territory." These roads connect settlements but slice through Palestinian towns and villages, fragmenting communities and making daily life harder for Palestinians caught between them. Smotrich has stated openly that this infrastructure ensures settlements "will not remain on paper—but will be established on the ground."

The human toll has become visible. In recent months, settlers have besieged Palestinian homes, cutting off water and electricity. The violence was severe enough that Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador and typically a vocal supporter of Israeli settlement, denounced one such attack as a "criminal and terrorist act." Hundreds of outposts—illegal under both Israeli and international law—have been established since the 1990s, and dozens have been retroactively legalized by the government.

Senior Israeli officials no longer hide the intent. In 2024, Smotrich said the E1 construction would help "establish sovereignty in Judea and Samaria"—the Israeli term for the occupied West Bank—"first on the ground and then through legislation." He added: "My life's mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state." The strategy is explicit: create physical, irreversible facts on the ground that no future government could easily undo. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, has called on the countries that condemned the plans to take "concrete measures" to stop them, but enforcement remains uncertain.

The timing matters. Elections in Israel are approaching, and Netanyahu's coalition hopes that aggressive settlement expansion will energize their base. If they lose power, they may calculate that the construction already underway—the roads, the homes, the outposts—will bind the next government's hands. Either way, the strategy is the same: make Palestinian statehood impossible by making the territory itself impossible to govern as a unified state.