Settlement of Farms in the West Bank, the Naqab, and Northern Gaza Strip
In its monitoring report on the annexation and settlement project since 7 October 2023 and the declaration of war on Gaza, the Peace Now movement confirms the unprecedented overt and covert acceleration of the annexation of the West Bank and the expulsion of Palestinians from Area C. The report also confirms that “for the first time, practical steps have been taken to implement official-legal annexation,” after the occupation army’s powers over the settlements and Palestinian civilians were withdrawn and transferred to an employee working under the command of Minister Smotrich. This effectively means that this system has become a Ministry of Annexation.
- During the mentioned period, the West Bank witnessed the following: The establishment of 47 new settlement outposts, most of which are “settlement farms”; i.e., an average of about a new outpost every week. It constitutes one form of settlement based on a family settlement or a small number of families, and specializes in one agricultural branch, and the state paves roads for dozens of kilometers in each outpost and provides it with electricity, water and infrastructure lines. In a comparative view, the annual average until 2024 was seven outposts per year, an increase of 500% this year.
- Despite the outposts being considered “illegal” even according to occupation law, not a single one of them has been evacuated. In addition, the process of establishing 8,681 housing units in the settlements in general continues. The cabinet also decided to establish 5 new settlements and to legalize three outposts as neighborhoods of existing settlements. It was also announced that 24,913 dunams will be legally annexed as state land; i.e., the land of the occupying state, which is about half the area declared “state land” since the Oslo Accords, three decades ago.
- Following the structural changes made by Smotrich in his capacity as a minister in the Ministry of Defense responsible for the settlement project with expanded powers, and in return, through the Ministry of Finance, he is blackmailing the army leadership and conditioning the release of budgets on the army’s submission to his settlement conditions, exclusively by the Central Command, which is responsible for the West Bank. The accelerating settlement project has become free of any procedural or legal restrictions. The settlers are actually imposing facts on the ground by establishing settlement outposts, while the army and most state systems provide protection and infrastructure for their survival.
- The Settlement Monitor report issued by the Peace Now movement for the year 2024 confirms the existence of a systematic policy aimed at reducing the living and existential space of Palestinians in areas classified as C, which equal about two-thirds of the area of the West Bank, while the tools of this policy are more than 1,300 attacks by settlers, the expulsion and displacement of 20 Palestinian residential communities, and the demolition of 901 Palestinian homes, in contrast to zero building permits for Palestinians in areas classified as C, while the settlers do not wait for any permit or license to seize the land and bring ready-made buildings to it.
- The report refers to the doubling of settlement budgets, which are budgets shrouded in a certain ambiguity regarding their spending items, for example, allocating 75 million shekels for illegal Israeli outposts and settlement farms. “Peace Now” confirms that these amounts are a budget “to finance settler violence,” and the budget items also include 409 million shekels ($120 million) for “distinctive projects in the settlements,” while Smotrich announced a five-year budget of 7 billion shekels for roads and streets in the settlements, including “illegal” settlement outposts.
In the Naqab:
- The “settlement farms” in the Naqab, within the Green Line, may have preceded their counterparts in the West Bank, and their history is linked to the establishment of the Zionist project. In the West Bank, they are called settlements or settlement purposes, and inside, towns for Judaization purposes. Israel considers them the best way to control the land and Judaize it with the least number of Jewish residents.
- One of the most famous settlement farms was the farm of former Prime Minister Sharon, with an area of about 4,000 dunams, which was justified by the fact that he received the land as a gift from a wealthy Jewish man.
- After 1948 and during the military rule imposed by the state on the Palestinians who remained in their homeland in the areas on which it was established, in 1956 the state forced the Abu al-Qi`an clan to move to Wadi Hiran and to the village of Umm al-Hiran, which is not recognized by Israel, and their lands were transferred to Kibbutz Shoval, which was originally established on part of their lands.
- In 2002, Israel decided to establish a Jewish town with a religious Zionist character, which it called “Dror” (meaning freedom), on the lands of the village of Umm al-Hiran, to which they moved in 1956. The state considered the residents of Umm al-Hiran to be “infiltrators and invaders.” After a long-term popular struggle accompanied by a legal struggle, the court decided to adopt the state’s position by evacuating the village of Umm al-Hiran and gave its residents the choice between demolishing their homes themselves or having the state demolish them and obligating the citizens to pay the costs of the demolition. Recently, the state demolished the mosque, permanently evacuated the residents and handed over the place to a religious Zionist settlement nucleus.
Northern Gaza Strip:
- The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip is no longer just a project being talked about, but is now being implemented and at a very advanced stage. The areas controlled by the army in the buffer zone and the expanded Netzarim corridor amount to about a third of the area of the northern Gaza Strip, whose population is decreasing daily due to ethnic cleansing. This policy has also become public.
- On the other hand, Israel does not intend to withdraw from these areas and from controlling the entire Gaza Strip, and the concept of a ceasefire for it does not include withdrawal or permanent occupation. Moreover, settlement in this Palestinian land is a project that is being prepared and planned rapidly, and within the functional division between the state, the settlement systems, and the Settlement Council.
In conclusion:
- The settlement project, like creeping annexation, does not await the official public political decision to annex, but rather it is based on the ground and its implementation is accelerating according to the doctrine of the far right and religious Zionism ruling all of Palestinian geography in the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza and the interior.
- Annexation, with its various names, poses an existential threat to all Palestinians, and this fact does not mean accepting it or viewing it as a foregone conclusion, but rather the struggle to prevent it on a Palestinian, Arab and international level is the demand of the hour, and exclusively in view of the Israeli occupation vision that sees Trump`s return to power as its historic opportunity and exclusively in the West Bank.
- There is Palestinian importance in addressing the committee emanating from the UN Human Rights Council, which began its work in May 2021 as a permanent follow-up committee on Israel`s practices in all areas it controls, and this also includes Gaza and the Palestinians of 1948 (the Naqab exclusively), and for these practices to be referred to the lawsuit before the International Court of Justice regarding acts of genocide.
- A unified Palestinian and Arab view is required for all of Israel`s practices and to stop fragmenting this view, which does not link the practices of the ruling Zionist establishment toward all Palestinians with different tools but according to a single perspective.
- The demand to stop the war of extermination, impose humanitarian aid and save the lives of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; and to officially and popularly confront the annexation, settlement and Judaization projects; and to end the occupation toward a Palestinian state remain the priority and desired by Palestinians.
Photo: Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Source: Progress Policy Center.
