Earlier in April, Israel’s security cabinet approved the establishment of 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank.
It was the largest single announcement on record, bringing the total number of Israeli settlements okayed by the current administration to 103.
UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese called it “the largest ethnic cleansing/land grab in Palestine, since the Nakba”.
The plans include both entirely new settlements and existing outposts that were previously built without Israeli permits and are set to be retroactively legalised.
Six of the planned settlements are south of the Palestinian city of Jenin, in the northern West Bank. According to media reports, two would be established on the sites of Ganim and Kadim - two unauthorised outposts in Jenin’s eastern neighbourhoods - which were dismantled along with two other settlements in the northern district, Homesh and Sa Nur, under Israel’s 2005 disengagement law.
Last Sunday, Israeli authorities reopened the Sa-Nur settlement, one of four former settlements near Jenin. “On this exciting day, we celebrate a historic correction to the criminal expulsion,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated at the ceremony. He said Israeli authorities were also “burying the idea of a Palestinian state”.
The latest settlement push effectively reverses the earlier withdrawal plan, permitting Israelis to return to areas that were previously off-limits. The process to re-legalise the four former settlements in the Jenin area began in March 2023, when Israel’s Knesset passed an amendment to the disengagement law to gradually repeal the ban on Israelis from entering these areas.
In mid-December of 2025, residents of Jenin reported settler groups gathering on the hills of Ganim and Kadim during Jewish holidays, openly calling for a renewed Jewish presence, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet decided to regularise 19 settlements across the West Bank, which included the rebuilding of the two northern outposts.
In the weeks that followed, Jenin and other parts of the northern West Bank were subjected to a broad Israeli military operation aimed at establishing a “new security reality” to enable the reestablishment of the evacuated settlements, including the designation of closed military zones, deployment of additional forces, and setup of military bases to secure the sites. The authorisation of 34 settlements was reportedly approved in late March but initially kept confidential by the Israeli cabinet, amid suggestions that the move was delayed to avoid provoking a US backlash during ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Iran.
All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law. Outposts, typically established by small groups of settlers without official Israeli authorisation, are considered illegal even under Israeli law, at least initially.
April’s land grab push is part of Israel’s broader plan to annex large swathes of the West Bank after displacing its residents. It aims to achieve this by rendering Palestinian areas targeted for resettlement uninhabitable through the destruction of roads, water, and power systems, and military control to force mass displacement.
“The settlements there are meant to drive Palestinians from their lands,” Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, an independent analyst specialising in the Arab-Israeli peace process, told The New Arab , noting that Jewish enclaves in the peripheral area of Jenin, long seen as “a low priority” for settlement, have become central to the current Israeli ruling coalition.
Citing Bezalel Smotrich and his settler movement’s claim that the West Bank belongs to Israel and should be annexed, Ben-Ephraim argued that, from their perspective, the neglected and vulnerable Jenin district presents an opportunity to be “strengthened” under Israeli sovereignty and repopulated with Jewish settlers.
The geopolitical expert noted that the Israeli army chief opposes the newly announced plan, explaining that maintaining settlements would require a heavy military presence and further strain Israeli army forces already overburdened in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the wider West Bank, with the risk of continued conflict with Iran.
Talking to TNA , Ubai Aboudi, executive director of Ramallah-based Bisan Center for Research and Development, affirmed that Tel Aviv seeks the complete “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, destroying their ability to have territorial contiguity and run an independent economy.
The latest decision targeting the area surrounding Jenin, he explained, will result in land loss, increased military activity, and the return of settlers, inevitably creating new “flashpoints of conflict” with Palestinian communities.
“It’s an ideological choice by the Israeli government to continue cutting the West Bank into isolated Bantustans, not just to dispossess Palestinians but also to make their lives as miserable as possible,” Bisan’s director said.
He referred to policy choices centred on the continuation of conflict, the denial of Palestinian rights, and the protection of armed settlers, with settler attacks often occurring with military presence or support.
“Palestinian lives and property have become fair game, with Israeli settlers and soldiers able to act with little to no fear of repercussions,” Aboudi stated.
Access to Palestinian land has been progressively restricted through a growing network of roads and security infrastructure designed to bypass Palestinian communities, sever geographic continuity, and integrate nearby areas into settlement blocs and military zones.
In parallel, Israeli settlers have increasingly engaged in property destruction and attacks against Palestinians as part of efforts to force them from their homes and lands.
Since Netanyahu’s right-wing government took office at the end of 2022, settlement expansion and settler violence have surged across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, with violence further escalating following the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.
Upon its inauguration, the coalition government pledged to legalise unlawfully built outposts, increase settlement funding, and advance steps toward applying Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. In July 2025, the Knesset reinforced this trajectory by passing a declaratory motion calling for the application of Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and the Jordan Valley.
Later in August, Israel approved the long-contested E1 settlement plan near East Jerusalem, authorising thousands of housing units between the city and Ma’ale Adumim, a move that would lead to the significant displacement of Palestinians and the de facto split of the West Bank into two separate enclaves.
The newly planned settlements in the southern environs of Jenin would effectively seal the city , cutting it off from other Palestinian population centres. This would alter the surrounding landscape in ways that deepen the isolation of Palestinian communities.
In an interview with The New Arab , Tahani Mustafa, a visiting fellow in the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), highlighted that the latest outpost approval is consistent with Israel’s vision of the West Bank as Israeli territory dotted with pockets of Palestinian areas under limited local governance.
“This only marks an acceleration of long-standing annexation policies in the West Bank seen under previous administrations, rooted in Israel’s view of Judea and Samaria as part of its territory,” the MENA specialist said.
Aboudi, who’s also a member of the Palestinian NGOs Network’s steering committee, warned that the authorised outposts will lay siege to Jenin, restricting access to farmland, hindering connections, crippling trade, and severely limiting residents’ ability to reach central West Bank cities.
“It’s another cut into already deeply fragmented Palestinian land,” he commented, emphasising that land annexation is a systematic policy reflected in Israeli actions across the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.
Ben-Ephraim cautioned that, alongside Jenin, other major Palestinian cities soon will all be enclosed by settlements, checkpoints, and closed military zones, shut off from their hinterland and linked by highways under full Israeli army control.
“It will be almost impossible to travel throughout the West Bank,” the analyst said. “The aim is to make movement between major cities unsafe and unappealing for Palestinians”, which will leave them largely confined to where they live.
In recent years, land seizures around Jenin have coincided with renewed attempts by settlers to reestablish their presence in the previously dismantled outposts. Temporary encampments, erected under army protection, have gradually evolved into caravans and mobile homes, signalling a shift toward a long-term foothold on the ground.
This has been occurring alongside a large-scale Israeli military operation launched in January of last year in the northern West Bank, which has left the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams nearly emptied.
Mustafa, who’s also a lecturer in international relations at King's College London, remarked that in the past few years, Tel Aviv’s actions on the ground have dramatically reshaped physical boundaries in the northern West Bank and across the territory more broadly.
“Israel has structurally, institutionally, and legally changed the geography of the West Bank”, the academic said. “It has been able to push the boundaries of what is acceptable. It knows it can get away with it.” Alessandra Bajec is a freelance journalist currently based in Tunis Follow her on Twitter: @AlessandraBajec Edited by Charlie Hoyle