2025 Sees Record-High Expansion of Illegal Israeli Settlements in West Bank 

January 2, 2026 News
Illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. (Photo: ISM Palestine, via Wikimedia Commons)

Peace Now said plans for 41 new illegal settlements were approved in 2025, making it the most extensive single year of settlement approvals on record.

2025 was a record-breaking year for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, with Israel’s far-right coalition approving an unprecedented number of new settlements and housing projects, the Anadolu news agency reported.

Rights groups say the move is aimed at annexing the territory and blocking Palestinian statehood, the report stated.

Citing the Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now, Anadolu reported that the approvals finalized this year capped an acceleration that began under the current government, surpassing any period since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.

“This is nothing to compare to previous governments,” Yonatan Mizrachi of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch Team told Anadolu. “The goal of this government … is to prevent a political solution based on a two-state solution.”

Re-establishment of Settlements

Peace Now said plans for 41 new illegal settlements were approved in 2025, making it the most extensive single year of settlement approvals on record. The figure includes both newly announced settlements and the retroactive legalization of previously unauthorized outposts.

In May, Israel’s Security Cabinet approved the construction of 22 new illegal settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank – the largest expansion in decades.

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The move included the reestablishment of settlements in Homesh and Sa-Nur, which were dismantled under Israel’s 2005 unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

Illegal Outposts

On December 21, the Security Cabinet approved an additional plan to legalize 19 more settlements in the occupied West Bank, some newly established and others long-standing outposts now granted formal status.

Mizrachi said the current government moved quickly after taking office, legalizing 10 outposts in early 2023 and transforming nine of them into settlements.

Outposts are illegal even under Israeli law, while settlements are considered legal by Israel despite being illegal under international law, the Anadolu report stated.

Altogether, 68 settlements have been approved, legalized or initiated over the past three years, Peace Now said.

“This does not mean that all 68 settlements have already been established,” Mizrachi said. “It means the process has begun – with government support, different planning committees and authorities.”

Geographic Implications

The expansion is geographically wide-ranging, extending into areas where no settlements previously existed.

“Sixty-eight settlements that will be built according to the Israeli plan from the south to the north or from the north to the south,” said Mizrachi.

This includes “areas that today we don’t have any settlements like areas around Jenin, around Hebron,” he added, “It’s all over the West Bank actually.”

In early 2023, there were more or less 140 settlements in the West Bank, Mizrachi said. With recent approvals, that number has risen to 208.

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The total number of illegal Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank now stands at about 750,000, the report noted. Illegal settlement expansion has also accelerated through construction approvals, Anadolu stated.

Densely Populated Palestinian Areas

Peace Now said on its website that Israeli authorities advanced plans for 28,163 settler housing units in 2025 – the highest figure ever recorded.

On the final day of the year, Israeli authorities approved a plan allowing settlers to return to Sa-Nur, greenlighting 126 housing units at the site evacuated in 2005, according to Israeli media.

The move was enabled by amendments introduced by the current government to the Disengagement Law, lifting restrictions on Israeli presence in parts of the northern West Bank.

Peace Now said the approval marks a return to settlement activity deep inside the northern West Bank, in densely populated Palestinian areas where illegal settlers had not previously been present.

Blocking Palestinian statehood

Mizrachi said settlement expansion is central to the government’s strategy to prevent Palestinian statehood without formally declaring annexation.

“In the last three years, Israel has taken many steps – bureaucratic steps, advancing settlements, developing the West Bank – to increase the number of Israeli settlers,” he said.

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“The aim is to prevent a Palestinian state in any political solution, because there will be so many settlements and so many locations with an Israeli presence that it would be much more difficult to evacuate,” Mizrachi added.

He said pressure from settler movements has intensified, pushing the government toward de facto annexation while avoiding a formal declaration due to international and US pressure.

Ethnic Cleansing

According to Yair Dvir, the spokesperson for Israeli rights group B’Tselem, the illegal settlement drive is accompanied by the forcible displacement of Palestinians.

“Israel continues to advance ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, both through the construction and retroactive legalization of outposts and new settlements, and through the forcible displacement of Palestinian communities and the violent takeover of vast areas of Palestinian lands,” he told Anadolu.

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Looking ahead, Mizrachi said illegal settlement expansion is likely to continue into 2026, an election year in Israel.

“We are assuming that the advancing of settlement, house units, financial support to the settlers will continue in 2026 – it might increase or might not,” he said. “But definitely, the pattern that we have seen in the last three years will continue.”

Settler Violence

He noted that since October 2023, dozens of Palestinian communities have been forced to flee due to illegal settler violence.

“Many times, an outpost is built next to the Palestinian community, making it more tense for the Palestinians to stay there,” he said. “We still see a lot of settler violence, much of it coming from illegal outposts.”

Mizrachi warned that the trajectory is deepening instability.

“Instead of going toward a political solution that would mean withdrawing from the West Bank,” he said, “we are just going deeper into a more problematic situation.”

Intensified Campaign

Since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, Palestinian officials say Israeli measures aimed at annexing the West Bank have intensified, including home demolitions, forced displacement and settlement expansion.

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Formal Israeli annexation of the West Bank would effectively end the viability of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, envisioned in multiple UN resolutions.

Last July, the International Court of Justice issued a landmark opinion that declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

(PC, Anadolu)

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