In its deliberate strategy to reshape the geography and demographics of the occupied Palestinian Territories, entrenching annexation and deepening its unlawful occupation, Israel’s security Cabinet has approved the construction of 13 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move that will further fragment the territory and isolate East Jerusalem from its surrounding Palestinian communities.

 

Israel’s Security Cabinet, approved on 2 July a plan to establish the new settlements in so-called Binyamin regional area, one of the largest settlement blocs in the central occupied West Bank.

 

It is situated along Route 60, the central north-south artery running through the West Bank that links Palestinian cities, while also connecting major Israeli settlements.

 

The first phase is expected to begin in the coming months and will include the establishment of four to six new settlements, backed by investments worth millions of shekels, Palestine’s Jerusalem governorate said.

 

Several existing pastoral outposts are also slated for formal legalisation, enabling them to receive government funding and infrastructure, it added.

 

The scheme is designed to link settlement blocs, tighten Israeli control over strategic hilltops , and restrict Palestinian territorial continuity.

 

“The plan seeks to create new geographical realities on the ground,” the governorate added in a statement.

 

While the world’s attention has been focused on the horrors of the Gaza war, the past two years have seen record numbers of new settlement units, illegal outposts, home demolitions, expansion on state land, and violent settler attacks in the West Bank.

 

Prime minister Netanyahu and his extremist coalition have been advancing their messianic Greater Israel agenda in unprecedented ways, threatening any viable future Palestinian state.

 

At an unprecedented pace the Israeli government has accelerated its de facto annexation of the West Bank, utilising the distraction of major regional conflicts to fundamentally reshape the territory's legal, administrative and geographic reality.

 

In a new report, released recently, the non-profit organisations Peace Now and Kerem Navot said the Israeli government had annexed large swathes of the occupied West Bank at an "unprecedented pace" between 2023 and 2025, with settlers playing a central role.

 

The surge in land seizures, settlement approvals and settler activity has been driven by the transfer of governing powers from the military to a civilian administration headed by far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has repeatedly called for the full annexation of the occupied territory.

 

The changes the report said will "enable rapid and systematic advancement of annexation objectives while bypassing the limited checks previously in place within the military and legal systems".

 

According to the report, the administrative overhaul has paved the way for plans to build 40,064 settlement housing units, enough to accommodate between 160,000 and 200,000 additional settlers.

 

There are currently an estimated 700,000 Israeli settlers living across the occupied West Bank in settlements considered illegal under international law.

 

"The pace of establishment increased from year to year, indicating an increasingly professionalised mechanism of land takeover that exploits the war [in Gaza] and the fact that, in practice, there is no enforcement against Israeli construction, in order to create new facts on the ground," the report said.

 

Nearly 1 million dunams of land, equivalent to around 1,000 square kilometers, is now under the control of settler farm outposts.

 

The report found that settlers now control around 18 percent of the occupied West Bank, with approximately 300,000 dunnums coming under their control in 2025 alone. Around 40 per cent of that land is classified by Israel as "state land".

 

Peace Now said the expansion has forced 118 Palestinian shepherding communities from their land between 2023 and 2025, with a further nine communities displaced during the first two months of 2026.

 

Alongside the expansion of settlements and the transfer of powers to civilian authorities, the report said Israel has increasingly restricted the Palestinian Authority's ability to govern in Areas A and B, undermining the framework established under the 1994 Oslo Accords.

 

"In practice, the government is working to dismantle this framework," the report said.

 

On its part, Amnesty International accused the Israeli government of conducting a "state-led annexation" and "ethnic cleansing" in the West Bank. The organisation alleged that coordinated state policies and support for violent settler groups are driving the forced displacement of Palestinian communities to expand Israeli control.

 

As Gaza faces genocide, Israel continues Its “Silent Annexation ” of the West Bank and the rapid acceleration in mid-2026 is fueled heavily by internal political pressures.

 

Israeli forces and settlers have intensified coordinated attacks across the occupied West Bank recently injuring Palestinians, raiding homes, carrying out arrests and expanding settlement activity in several governorates.

 

With mandatory national elections scheduled for October 2026 at the latest, radical settler elements in the ruling coalition are rushing to lock in gains and establish an irreversible "revolution in settlement" before a potential change in leadership.

 

This push continues despite warnings from the United Nations Security Council that these measures permanently undermine any prospect of a viable, contiguous independent Palestinian state.

 

Israel has become an apartheid state, has violated the core international norm against acquiring territory by force and is dispelling what remains of hopes for a two-state solution.

 

Owing to the energies of Smotrich and his settler allies now ensconced in the bureaucracy, the creeping annexation of the West Bank has advanced to the point that declaring Israeli sovereignty over the territory, or at least significant parts of it, would be a matter of form more than substance.

 

The question is what world powers that still see a two-state solution as integral to regional peace making, which presumably include those countries calling for recognition of a Palestinian state, will do about it ?

 

Are they prepared to invest the political capital required to halt and reverse a reality that Israel has been creating on the ground for decades – and with greater industry and ambition since Smotrich received his current mandate?

 

The record to date does not inspire hope. Until very recently, external actors have given Israel virtual carte blanche in its creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank. The US, the country with most influence over Israel, has given Israel its full backing, notwithstanding whatever personal animosity might have existed between Netanyahu and the US president of the time.

 

The Trump administration has not been and will not be different.