“The security cabinet secretly decided to establish 34 new settlements,” said the anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now of the decision taken on April 1.
The 34 settlements come on top of 68 others already approved since prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government came to power in 2022.
The decision has not been officially published by any government body, and the defence ministry, in charge of settlements in the occupied West Bank, declined to respond to AFP’s questions.
“We are not addressing this issue,” a spokesperson for the ministry told AFP.
According to news channel i24News, 10 of the 34 settlements are already existing outposts, which are illegal under Israeli law, but will now be retroactively legalised under the decision.
The remaining 24 are yet to be built.
All settlements are illegal under international law.
In the Palestinian village of Deir Ammar, residents said they were worried that a settler outpost established on a hilltop near their area about a year ago would be one of the legalised settlements.
According to a list of the 34 settlements published by the Palestinian Authority’s Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, which deals with settlement matters, the location of the future settlement of Ramatim Tzofim matches that of the outpost near Deir Ammar, whose residents have been attacked at least three times by the new settlers.
‘We are finished ‘
Nael Mussa, a farmer whose chicken coop and its adjacent farmhouse were attacked on several occasions, told AFP he feared the government decision would lead to more land grabs.
“We are effectively finished. If this becomes a settlement, we are finished in Deir Ammar. We will have no land left at all,” 54-year-old Mussa told AFP.
Palestinian farmer Ismail Awdeh expressed a similar sentiment.
“What we fear is that tomorrow this area will become a settlement and the land will be taken from us… of course it will grow,” Awdeh said, referring to the settlement.
“This affects every resident in this area… This land is considered the food basket of the village,” he told AFP.
Residents said settlers placed rocks on a road used by farmers to reach their fields near the new outpost, and damaged an olive tree orchard there.
News website Ynet reported that military chief Eyal Zamir warned during the security cabinet meeting on April 1 that the army could “collapse” because of increasing demands on its manpower.
That included the legalisation of dozens of outposts, granting them official settlement status and therefore for protection from Israeli troops.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis now live there in settlements, among some three million Palestinians.
Settlement expansion has been a policy under successive Israeli governments since 1967, but has accelerated significantly under the current Netanyahu-led coalition, widely regarded as one of the most right-wing in Israel’s history.
Rights groups say approvals of new settlements, land seizures and settler violence have further increased since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.