The Defense Ministry on Thursday confirmed that the government has approved the construction of 22 new West Bank settlements, which will include a series of new communities and the legalization of several wildcat outposts, saying the move was aimed at cementing Israel’s hold over the area and thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
A ministry statement hailed the leadership of Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry, and called the security cabinet’s decision “a step that will change the face of the area and shape the future of settlement for years to come.”
“The new settlements are all placed within a long-term strategic vision, whose goal is to strengthen the Israeli hold on the territory, to avoid the establishment of a Palestinian state, and to create the basis for future development of settlement in the coming decades,” the ministry said.
The 22 communities will include Homesh and Sa-Nur, the statement confirmed — two former settlements that were evacuated in 2005 alongside Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip, at which time a law was passed forbidding Israelis from entering that part of the northern West Bank.
In the two decades since, there have been repeated efforts to reestablish a settler presence at the evacuated settlements, and last year the law forbidding Israelis from entering the area was repealed.
“This decision paves the way for the renewal of Jewish settlement in Homesh and Sa-Nur — a process that corrects a historic injustice and signifies a strong stance on our right to the land,” the Defense Ministry said in its statement Thursday.
The slate of new settlements also includes four new communities along the border with Jordan, the statement added, hailing their establishment as strengthening Israel’s “national security” and “strategic hold of the area.”
Katz said in the statement that the “historic decision” would “strengthen our hold on Judea and Samaria,” using a Biblical term for the West Bank, “anchoring our historic right in the Land of Israel and constituting a crushing answer to Palestinian terror that tries to harm settlement and to weaken it.”
“Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria constitutes an essential protective wall for the security of the large population centers in Israel and we must do everything in order to broaden and strengthen this wall of protection,” Katz said, noting that this decision was ” also a strategic step to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel.”
Smotrich hailed a “big day for settlement and an important day for the State of Israel.”
“Through hard work and tenacious leadership, we have succeeded, thank God, in creating a deep strategic change, returning the State of Israel to the track of construction, Zionism, and vision.”
He continued: “Settlement in the land our ancestors inherited is a protective wall for the State of Israel — and today we have taken a huge step for its strengthening. The next step — sovereignty!” “Sovereignty” refers to his long-held goal of annexation of the West Bank.
“No foreign land have we taken, but rather the inheritance of our ancestors,” Smotrich concluded.
The quotation, a paraphrase from the First Book of Maccabees, referred to an ancient Jewish leader’s statement after conquering parts of the land of Israel in the second century BCE. It has been used in modern times by Zionist and Israeli leaders in reference to the State of Israel.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state. Most of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to resolving the decades-old conflict. Several Arab and Muslim states including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia have said that the establishment of a Palestinian state is their condition for normalizing ties with Israel.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem, but has refrained from taking the step in the West Bank. Far-right leaders including Smotrich have also pushed for Israel to reestablish settlements in the Gaza Strip during the war there with Hamas.
Agencies contributed to this report