WEST BANK, (PIC)
Israeli settlements extend and spread over vast areas of the West Bank to form an integrated colonial structure based on reshaping geography, demography, and the legal system to serve the occupation’s long-term control project. These settlements are distributed according to strategic planning that links settlement blocs, bypass roads, and military zones, leading to the fragmentation of Palestinian land into separate enclaves and undermining the possibility of establishing a contiguous geographical entity. This expansion is not random, but is based on official policies supported by administrative and legal measures that redefine land use and ownership, giving preference to settlers at the expense of the Palestinians, the owners of the land.
What is meant by West Bank settlements?
West Bank settlements are communities established by the Israeli occupation on Palestinian lands occupied since 1967. Some began as military sites and then turned into civilian settlements, and some were established from the beginning within a clear political plan to impose permanent facts on the ground. In addition to the settlements recognized by the occupation authorities, there are outposts that were often established faster and more violently, and later protection and services were provided to them in preparation for their legalization.
In official Israeli discourse, these settlements are presented as neighborhoods, towns, or natural growth areas. But on the ground, the meaning is completely different. We are facing an organized seizure of land and resources, surrounding Palestinians with a network of checkpoints, military roads, and closed areas, so that the Palestinian presence itself turns into a besieged, threatened presence that can be reduced at any moment.
Guide to West Bank settlements: How did the project begin?
The settlement project began after the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, but it was not a fleeting reaction or just an ideological impulse of some extremist Zionist gangs. Since the early years, successive Israeli governments have supported settlement as a strategic tool. The goal was clear: to prevent any full withdrawal from the occupied land, and to impose a reality that makes the establishment of a geographically contiguous Palestinian state extremely difficult.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the pace of establishing settlements accelerated on mountaintops, near Jerusalem, in the Jordan Valley, and around major Palestinian cities. The sites were chosen carefully. Some control vital passages, some cut off communication between the north and south of the West Bank, and some surround Jerusalem and isolate it from its natural Palestinian extension.
After the Oslo Accords, settlement did not recede as was promoted at the time, but rather expanded at a greater pace under the cover of the political process. This is one of the most blatant aspects of the scene. While the talk was about a settlement and negotiations, bulldozers were working, and maps were being rewritten on the ground. Therefore, reading settlement outside the context of Oslo, or as if it were a sudden deviation, misleads the reader more than it explains to him.
According to data from research centers and field reports until the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025, the settlement scene consists of a vast and overlapping network: By the beginning of 2025, research data indicates the existence of about 200 official settlements established in the West Bank, and about 305 outposts, including 125 independent outposts and 180 linked to existing settlements, totaling about 710 settlement and military sites when counting the military bases linked to the settlement infrastructure.
How do settlements actually expand?
Settlement expansion does not only happen through the announcement of a new settlement. Sometimes the path begins by paving a bypass road that devours wide agricultural lands. Sometimes a mountain is confiscated under the pretext that it is state land, then a small outpost is established on it, then the outpost is surrounded by military guards, then electricity and water arrive, and after years it becomes an established settlement.
There is also the method of security buffer zones around settlements. The confiscated area is not limited to the houses built by the settlers, but extends to a wide perimeter that Palestinians are prevented from accessing or farming their land in it. In grazing areas, settlement groups have used this logic to expel Palestinian Bedouin and agricultural communities from vast areas without a clear official announcement, but rather through continuous intimidation and daily violence.
The occupation uses the law as a tool of confiscation, but it also uses organized chaos. This is an important point. Not everything that happens goes through a declared government decision, but many of the attacks that appear as individual initiatives happen under the eyes and protection of the army, and are later translated into a fixed reality.
Over the past two years, the West Bank and Jerusalem have witnessed an unprecedented settlement escalation, coinciding with the recording of 8,691 attacks by settlers against Palestinians and their property. During the same period, the approval of thousands of new settlement units accelerated, alongside the declaration of tens of thousands of dunums as state lands, including more than 26,000 dunums declared since the end of 2022, an area equivalent to about half of what has been confiscated using this tool since the Oslo Accords.
Geographical distribution and why it matters
The danger of settlements lies not only in their number, but in their locations and interconnectedness. The major settlement blocs around Jerusalem aim to separate the city from the West Bank. Settlement in the Jordan Valley targets control over the eastern borders and agricultural and water resources. As for the settlements planted amidst the hills near Nablus, Ramallah, and al-Khalil, they work to fragment Palestinian geography into separate pockets.
For this reason, it is not enough to look at each settlement as an independent unit. The whole project is based on the network: a settlement, a bypass road, a checkpoint, a military zone, a wall, and scattered outposts that perform the same function. The result is that the Palestinian sometimes needs a much longer distance to reach his land, university, or hospital, not because the road is naturally far, but because the settlement has re-engineered movement and life.
Jerusalem as a concentrated model
In Jerusalem and its surroundings, the settlement project appears in its clearest form. There is a constant quest to create a settlement belt that separates Jerusalem from Bethlehem and Ramallah, and strikes at the Palestinian presence inside and outside the city. Every new settlement neighborhood, every road, and every decision to demolish or revoke residency cannot be read in isolation from this larger goal: deciding the identity of the city by force and imposing an artificial Jewish majority within a historical Palestinian space.
In occupied East Jerusalem, there are about 15 major Israeli settlements inhabited by more than 220,000 settlers. These settlements include large settlement neighborhoods that were illegally annexed, such as Gilo, Ramot, and Har Homa, in addition to outposts inside Palestinian neighborhoods.
The Jordan Valley as a model for spatial control
In the Jordan Valley, settlement takes another form related to control over open land, water, and borders. Here, the goal is not only to besiege cities, but to reduce the rural and agricultural Palestinian presence itself. Therefore, demolition operations, confiscation of equipment, prevention of construction, and harassment of Bedouin communities are repeated. Settlement in the Jordan Valley is not marginal, but part of an Israeli vision that considers this region a strategic reservoir that must be wrested from any future Palestinian sovereignty.
Daily impact on Palestinians
Those who live near settlements do not face an abstract political idea, but a heavy daily reality. A farmer may be prevented from accessing his land except in limited seasons and under humiliating security coordination. A student passes through checkpoints and winding roads. A family in a village adjacent to a settlement outpost lives under the threat of raids, burning of vehicles, or attacks on olive trees.
Settler violence is not an exceptional case. In many areas, it has become part of the mechanism of silent displacement. Settlers attack villages, burn crops, assault herders, and then the army often intervenes to protect the attackers or to punish Palestinians who try to defend themselves. This is not a field coincidence, but a political function: making Palestinian life unbearable, and pushing people to leave, even without a written deportation order.
The economy is also deeply damaged. Agricultural land is lost, water is restricted, investment becomes fraught with risk, and movement between cities is disrupted. Even when direct confiscation does not occur, the presence of settlements imposes an environment of instability that prevents the natural growth of Palestinian society.
What does international law say?
From a legal standpoint, settlements established in the occupied territories are considered illegal under international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention and multiple United Nations resolutions. Transferring the population of the occupying power to the occupied land, confiscating resources, and changing the demographic composition of the land by force are all elements that make the settlement project at its core a continuous violation, not just a political dispute subject to interpretation.
But the problem is not the absence of a legal description, but the absence of actual accountability. The international community has been repeating the same positions for decades, while expansion continues on the ground. This contradiction between diplomatic language and the reality on the ground has given the occupation enough time and space to turn the crime into a daily, ordinary scene in the eyes of many.
Why settlement cannot be separated from the Israeli political system
Sometimes settlement is portrayed as if it were only the project of an extremist right-wing trend. This description is incomplete. It is true that the religious and national right has pushed the project to more aggressive and brazen levels, but the basic infrastructure of settlement was formed with broad support from Israeli state institutions over decades. The difference between governments was in speed, style, and discourse, not in the basic principle based on consolidating control and preventing Palestinian liberation.
This does not mean that all Israeli parties are identical, but it means that betting on formal changes within the Israeli scene without real pressure and without a tangible political cost has proven its failure repeatedly. Settlement is not a mistake that can be automatically corrected from within the system, but rather one of its pillars.
Guide to West Bank settlements for those who want political understanding
If the reader wants an accurate understanding, he must look at settlement as a tool for three functions at once. The first function is the seizure of land. The second is the fragmentation of Palestinian society and its geographical isolation. The third is creating forced negotiating facts that make any talk of Palestinian sovereignty diminished and besieged.
It is also important to understand that settlement does not only move when the occupation government announces new plans. Sometimes the real progress is in small details: a new settlement farm, an observation point, a closed street, or preventing a village from urban expansion. These details are what make the final map.
Therefore, following settlement news requires vigilance that goes beyond general figures. The question is not only how many settlements exist, but where they are expanding, whom they are besieging, what road they are closing, what spring they are controlling, and what Palestinian community they are pushing to suffocation. Here, accurate coverage becomes a political and cognitive act at once, which is what made platforms like PIC focus on continuity in monitoring this file rather than dealing with it as a passing news wave.
Settlement in the West Bank is not an unchangeable fate, but it is also not a phenomenon that will recede through appeals alone. Understanding it accurately is a necessary first step, because calling things by their names breaks much of the fog: these are not real estate disputes, nor disputed neighborhoods, but settler colonialism advancing every day. Every serious reading of the West Bank begins from here, from the land that is being wrested, and from the people who insist despite that on staying.