Government announces 19 new West Bank settlements and legalized outposts

11 new settlements to be built, 8 outposts and neighborhoods recognized as settlements, including two evacuated in 2005; Smotrich says move aims to thwart Palestinian state

The government on Sunday formally announced that 11 new settlements will be established in the West Bank, along with the legalization or recognition of eight illegal outposts and settlement “neighborhoods” as official settlements.

The new settlements spanning the length and breadth of the West Bank had been detailed in a resolution proposed by Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and approved by the security cabinet on December 12.

Smotrich said the announcement was aimed at blocking a Palestinian state.

The newly recognized settlements are Kida, Esh Kodesh, Givat Harel, Mishol, Kochav Hashachar-North, Nof Gilad, Ganim, Kadim, Shalem, Har Bezek, Reihanit, Rosh Ha’ayin-East, Tammun, P’nei Kedem, Yatziv, Ya’ar El Keren, Allenby, Yitav-West, and Nahal Doron.

About half of the outposts are located deep inside the West Bank, while the others are dispersed more or less evenly along the Green Line that separates the territory from Israel.

Some of the outposts have been in place for decades. For example, Givat Harel was established in 1998, and nearby Esh Kodesh in 2000, according to settlement watchdog Peace Now.

Ganim and Kadim were evacuated under the terms of the 2005 Disengagement, in which Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza and four settlements in the northern Samaria district of the West Bank. The other two, Homesh and Sa Nur, were formally reestablished in May this year.

The government passed legislation in March 2023 annulling the clauses of the legislation that led to the evacuation of those four settlements, paving the way for their reestablishment.

The security cabinet approved a decision to split off the neighborhood of Givat Harel from Givat Haroeh in February 2023.

“After 20 years, we are righting a painful injustice and returning Ganim and Kadim to the settlement map, alongside other important settlements throughout Judea and Samaria,” said Smotrich in announcing the new settlements.

“We are stopping the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state on the ground. We will continue to develop, build and settle in the land of our ancestors, with faith in the righteousness of the path,” he said.

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 conquered 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 latest approvals come days after the United Nations said the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank had reached its highest level since at least 2017.

Smotrich has included in the state budget, approved by the cabinet last week, a plan to spend about NIS 2.7 billion ($841 million) over five years on the expansion of settlements and legalization of outposts that were built without government permits. The plan was opposed by a plurality of respondents in a poll earlier in the month by Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site.

With Sunday’s approvals, the government has approved for construction or retroactively legalized 69 new settlements since it took office at the end of 2022, Smotrich said.

Before that, virtually no new settlements had been approved or outposts legalized since the late 1990s.

The approval increases the number of settlements in the West Bank by nearly 50 percent from 141 in 2022 to 210 after the current round of authorizations, according to Peace Now.

The expansion of settlements in the West Bank is at its highest rate since at least 2017, when the United Nations began tracking such data, according to a report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier this month.

In 2025, “plans for nearly 47,390 housing units were advanced, approved, or tendered, compared with some 26,170 in 2024,” the report, which was seen by AFP, said.

Guterres condemned the “relentless” expansion, saying it “continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous and sovereign Palestinian State.”

“These figures represent a sharp increase compared to previous years,” he added, noting an average of 12,815 housing units were added annually between 2017 and 2022.

Since the war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas-led October 7 massacre in 2023, calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state have proliferated, with several European countries, Canada, and Australia recently moving to formally recognize such a state, drawing rebukes from Israel, which cast the declarations as rewards for terror.

Agencies contributed to this report.