Illegal Israeli settlers began moving into the newly established illegal settlement of Emek Dotan on Sunday.
The illegal settlement has been built on Palestinian land in the town of Arraba, west of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, according to Israeli media.
Channel 7 reported that trucks carrying equipment arrived at the site and that the first illegal settler families from the settlement's founding group moved into buildings erected there.
The move comes ahead of an official inauguration ceremony scheduled for Sunday set to be attended by Israeli Cabinet ministers, Knesset members, and other public figures, according to the report.
Expected attendees include Education Minister Yoav Kisch, Security Cabinet Minister Zeev Elkin, Knesset members Keti Shitrit, Boaz Bismuth, and Nissim Vaturi, and Zeev Hever, secretary-general of the Amana settlement organisation.
Rabbi Haim Baruch, head of the Yeshivat Beror Hayil institutions in Lod and Tiberias, is also expected to attend.
Graduates of his religious school are among the illegal Israeli settlement's first residents, Channel 7 reported.
The illegal settlement was established as part of a broader plan led by the Samaria Regional Council to establish 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, all of them illegal.
“This is the fifth settlement established by the Samaria Regional Council in less than a year,” the channel said.
According to daily Israel Hayom, Emek Dotan is the first illegal settlement in the northern occupied West Bank to be established on a site where no settlement existed before Israel's 2005 disengagement plan.
Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The UN and most of the international community consider Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory illegal under international law and view their expansion as an obstacle to a two-state solution.
Palestinians consider the illegal settlement expansion part of a broader policy of land seizure and territorial fragmentation in the occupied West Bank.
UN Security Council Resolution 2334, issued in 2016, states that Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation of international law.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice said in an advisory opinion that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end as soon as possible.
