A record number of illegal settlement outposts were established in 2024 and the year saw an all-time high for land appropriation, the left-wing Peace Now organization reported in its annual review of settlement activity.
The report noted that a record 59 illegal outposts, groups of structures not authorized by the government, were set up across the West Bank in 2024, while more land in the territory was declared “state land” — making it available for residential, commercial or agricultural development — than in any year since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.
In addition, the government retroactively legalized or began the legalization process for 10 illegal outposts, made dozens of other illegal outposts eligible for funding, and massively increased funding for settlements and outposts of all kinds.
Critically, bureaucratic processes were put in place that transferred key civilian responsibilities and authorities in the West Bank from the IDF to the new Settlement Administration in the Defense Ministry, upending a policy — in place since Israel captured the territory from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War — that kept these powers in the hands of the military, in accordance with international law on what is referred to as “belligerent occupation.”
Peace Now and legal experts have described the transfer of these powers to Israel’s civilian government as de facto annexation, something that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has authority over the Settlement Administration, acknowledged in June.
“Since the formation of the current government, Israel has been completing the creation of the administrative infrastructure for the de facto annexation of the West Bank to Israel, transferring powers from the [IDF’s] Civil Administration to a political and civil body under the authority of Minister Smotrich,” said Peace Now, which has long campaigned against the settlement movement, in its annual report.
According to Peace Now’s annual review, 59 illegal outposts were established in 2024, compared to the annual average from 1993 to 2023 of seven outposts a year.
Most of those outposts were so-called farming outposts, which their founders and residents openly declare are designed to seize as much West Bank land as possible.
Eight of these illegal outposts were established in Area B, for the first time since the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Authority has civil but not security control in Area B, and the establishment of outposts there was seen as an encroachment on the legal and governmental authority of the Palestinian Authority.
Weakening the Palestinian Authority is a specific goal of Smotrich’s in his efforts to permanently stymie the establishment of a Palestinian state and annex large swaths of the West Bank.
Peace Now also reported that Israel paved some 114 kilometers (71 miles) of new roads in the West Bank, while some 9,884 housing units in the settlements were advanced through various stages of planning permission in the Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration, an agency within the Defense Ministry.
The Higher Planning Committee approved no planning permission requests for Palestinian housing at all in 2024, and rejected 137 out of 138 appeals against planning permission denials, Peace Now stated.
Some 5,994 acres of land in the West Bank were declared to be state land, essentially appropriating them for use in the settlement movement since planning permission for Palestinian development in Area C is almost never granted.
The amount of land declared to be state land in 2024 far outstrips any other year this century, with the highest previous total being 1,181 acres in 2014.
Funding for the Settlements and National Missions Ministry was massively increased from its original budget amounting to hundreds of millions of shekels in additional funding, while NIS 75 million ($21 million) of public money went to illegal outposts.
Israel’s civilian control over the West Bank was also dramatically deepened, after the IDF transferred a raft of legal powers in the West Bank to a civilian administrator placed inside the Civil Administration.
Critically, that administrator is directly accountable to Smotrich and not to the head of the Civil Administration, largely removing the IDF’s role in many aspects of civil governance of the West Bank and placing them in the hands of the Israeli government.
“We came to settle the land, to build it, and to prevent its division and the establishment of a Palestinian state, God forbid. And the way to prevent this is to develop the settlements,” Smotrich said of these developments in June last year.