How Israel’s decades-long settlement project erases Palestinian state

When people talk about the Israeli “occupation” of Palestinian lands in legal terms, it refers to two non-contiguous territories: Gaza and the occupied West Bank, the latter encompassing occupied East Jerusalem.

The West Bank, at its closest point, is 50 km from Gaza, which Israel has decimated in its genocidal war in the past two years.

While the world has primarily focused on Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reshaped the ground reality in the occupied West Bank in a way that undermines the viability of a future Palestinian state.

More than a thousand Palestinians have been killed, and tens of thousands have been displaced in the occupied West Bank as Israeli illegal settlers backed by the military went on a rampage, burning Palestinian villages, destroying property and stealing livestock.

On Sunday, the Israeli plan to erase Palestine culminated in what critics have labelled a “mega land grab” amounting to “de facto annexation”.

Under the latest measure, the Israeli government has approved a proposal to register Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank as “state property”, doing away with even the pretence that it’s serious about the two-state solution.

The plan will effectively drive out tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and allow illegal settlers to lay claim to Palestinian homes and farmland.

Jewish settlements built on occupied Palestinian lands are considered illegal internationally. But successive Israeli governments have taken steps to cement them as a permanent reality on the ground. And the most blatant attempts took place in the past two years.

Hilltop youth becomes honorable citizen

Over the years, Israel’s footprint in the occupied West Bank has expanded not only through illegal settlements but also through the establishment of “outposts” that are illegal even under Israeli law.

An outpost refers to a settlement built without formal government approval, in violation of planning and construction regulations.

Often populated by youth branches of the extremist groups, some channelled through state-funded initiatives aimed at assisting “at-risk” young people, these outposts have become flashpoints for violence.

They have often been linked to the torching of Palestinian homes and farmland, assaults on shepherds, the uprooting of olive trees, and the vandalism of mosques and vehicles.

But Israeli authorities have frequently turned a blind eye to them, often rewarding their violence by granting them legitimacy.

In late 2025, the government retroactively legalised 19 such outposts that had been built without authorisation.

In January, permits were issued for five more outposts. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the move would weaken the viability of a future Palestinian state.

Settlement expansion

Today, nearly 750,000 Israeli settlers live in around 160 illegal settlements, corresponding to 10 percent of the Jewish population in Israel. All of these settlements are built on land, which belongs to the Palestinians.

Under international law, the West Bank is an occupied territory whose land cannot be permanently claimed or altered.

This was affirmed by the International Court of Justice, which in July 2024 ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

Yet, just as international law failed to halt the devastation of Gaza, it has historically appeared equally powerless as Israel redraws the map of the West Bank.

Decades of coordinated expansion

Since 1967, Israeli governments across the political spectrum have promoted illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, despite periodic freezes under US pressure.

In the 1970s, the extremist movement Gush Emunim, which viewed settlement of the so-called biblical lands of “Judea and Samaria” as a theological and nationalist imperative, began establishing outposts across the territory.

At the same time, however, the Israeli state was pursuing its own coordinated expansion strategy. The Drobles Plan, drafted in 1978 by the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division, outlined a blueprint to position settlements not only around Palestinian population centres but also between them, fragmenting territorial contiguity.

At the time the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, about 250,000 Israeli settlers were living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem combined, according to Israeli watchdog group Peace Now. Today, that figure stands at roughly 737,000 — nearly tripling over three decades.

The latest Israeli measures aimed at taking over Palestinian land are expected to allow demolitions and seizures of property even in areas administered civilly and security-wise by the Palestinian Authority.

How is the West Bank divided?

The current administrative structure of the occupied West Bank largely stems from the 1993 Oslo Accords, which divided the territory into Areas A, B and C.

Area A, comprising about 18 percent of the occupied West Bank, includes major Palestinian cities and is under Palestinian civil and security control.

Area B, accounting for roughly 22-23 percent of the territory, falls under Palestinian civil administration with Israeli security control.

Area C, which covers around 60 percent of the occupied West Bank, remains under full Israeli occupation and contains most of the land reserves for future Palestinian urban growth, agriculture and grazing, according to the United Nations.