Israeli Government Launches Multiple Settlement Projects in the West Bank beginning 2026

Settlement Weekly Report 17 - 23 Jan. 2026

By: Madeeha Al-A’raj
The ‘National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements stated in its latest weekly report , that . with Israel heading toward elections, whether early´-or-as scheduled. The Israeli parties in general and the Kahanist Right Wing parties in particular, are riding high waves of extremism. Circles within the occupying State, especially, those involved in the theft of Palestinian land and its conversion into a vital zone for destructive Israeli activities, asserts: ‘If 2025 was a year of revolutionary decisions and a shift in the concept of action, then 2026 will be the year of implementation, as we will see boots on the ground.’
Those circles, especially within the Civil Administration of the occupation authorities, headed by Bezalel Smotrich, base their statements and their ability to translate them into action on what was stipulated in the coalition agreements between the ‘Religious Zionist and Likud parties’. The agreements with the explicit approval of Netanyahu stipulated the establishment of 70 new settlements, the majority of which already exist on the ground awaiting retroactive legalization, while some are entirely new, concentrated in the Jerusalem Governorate, the northern West Bank, and the Palestinian Jordan Valley.
Especially after the 2005-Disengagement-Law was annuled, leading to a return to the settlements that existed at the time, and the expansion of new settlements on Jabal Eibal overlooking Nablus from the north, and the ‘City of Dates’ in the Jordan Valley, which is supposed to accommodate Haredi residents, and other settlement projects.
Within the context, the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that the occupation government recently approved a large-scale plan to confiscate Palestinian land for the purpose of establishing a new settlement project. Beginning of the year, it confiscated 695 dunams to build a new settlement neighborhood near the Karnei Shomron settlement, on land belonging to the villages of Kafr Laqif, Jinsafut, and Deir Istiya in Wadi Qana.
The area has a high strategic importance, and its control would sever the geographical contiguity between the governorates of Salfeet and Qalqilia. The aim of the move is to prevent geographical contiguity between Palestinian cities and towns in the two governorates, turning them into isolated enclaves, thus, weakening the possibility of establishing a contiguous Palestinian State.
Yedioth Ahronoth also noted that the plan to confiscate the area near Karnei Shomron had been on the table for Israeli governments for years, but had not been implemented for various reasons. In 2019, government ministers attempted to push for settlement in the area, based on a 1984 government decision, but the necessary approvals were hindered due to the presence of tens of thousands of Palestinian towns and communities surrounding the area.
The current move connects the Karnei Shomron settlement council with the settlements of Elkana and Etz Efraim (built on land belonging to the village of Mas ha in Salfeet), encompassing an area of 700 dunams, in addition to about 200 dunams belonging to Israeli businessmen and designated for Haredi housing. According to the plan, the project is expected to include thousands of settlement units, and to turn ‘Karnei Shomron’ into a city, with road 5 being linked to road 505, creating an Israeli geographical contiguity that cuts off and besieges the Palestinian villages in the area and turns them into isolated enclaves.
According to the newspaper, the project includes the construction of 5,774 housing units in new neighborhoods extending eastward, connecting the settlement of Karnei Shomron that weas established in 1978 on Palestinian land belonging to the villages of Kafr Laqif, Jinsafut, and Deir Istiya in the Wadi Qana area, with the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Immanuel, established in 1983 within the Wadi Qana Nature Reserve in the Deir Istiya town, northwest of Salfeet Governorate.
The project also includes the creation of an educational complex comprising dozens of schools and kindergartens, as well as significant cultural, sports, and commercial facilities, including a cultural center, a sports club, and a major shopping mall. Moreover, the project infrastructure improvements, including road repaving, burying power lines, and the creation of a public park with an investment exceeding NIS 10,000,000, in addition to the construction of new roads and dedicated bicycle paths.
Noting that in 2020, an outpost known as Nahal Kana Farm - sometimes called ‘Dorot Farm’ - was established in the area and began exerting pressure on the neighboring Palestinian residents and farmers-;- farm operators grazed their livestock within Palestinian orchards and cultivated fields, and forcibly prevented Palestinians from accessing hundreds of dunams surrounding the outpost. In recent years, real estate developers have begun marketing plots of land in the area for the creation of a future city called ‘Dorot Illit’, designated for the Haredi community.
As part of the land marketing, the development company presents a vision of the planned settlement that includes all the surrounding Israeli settlements, while completely erasing the surrounding Palestinian villages. It now appears that the government is joining these efforts, as the Civil Administration has designated the land adjacent to the developers properties as ‘Dorot’.
That’s not the first settlement established at the initiative of private real estate developers who claim to have purchased land from Palestinians. In Feb. 2023, the government officially approved the establishment of the settlement of Mishmar Yehuda, allocating adjacent state-owned land to plots acquired by real estate developers. Other settlements established in a similar manner in the past include Modi in Illit, Revava, and Avnei Hefetz, among others.
The Israeli Finance Minister, Smotrich was quoted as saying: ‘The establishment of the Dorot Neighborhood constitutes a tremendous breakthrough that will lead to the construction of thousands of housing units in Karnei Shomron, which will become a city.’ Adding, ‘When Karnei Shomron is strong, security also improves in Ra’anana and Kfar Saba. We are continuing to build and develop settlements, continuing to kill the idea of a Palestinian State, and continuing to consolidate the security belt of Gush Dan ‘the Tel Aviv metropolitan area’.’
The newspaper also quoted the head of the Karnei Shomron Regional Council, Yonatan Kuznets, as saying that ‘declaring the adjacent lands as state lands is not merely a strategic step that imposes facts on the ground and curbs the illusory dream of a Palestinian state, but a dramatic step to create a single settlement bloc with Karnei Shomron at its center.’
In Salfeet, settlers also about 180 dunams of land were seized in the Al-Zawiya town to establish a settler cemetery. A move carries serious implications, as it aims to impose a new reality and expand settlement control in a targeted area that is subjected to almost daily settler attacks, including the uprooting of olive trees and the bulldozing of vast areas of agricultural land. This is in addition to the issuance of notices aimed at seizing about 4,000 dunams of the town s land, as part of settlement plans that would -alter-the geographic and demographic character of the area.
In this regard, the acting mayor of Al-Zawiya, Amir Shuqair, stated that the settlement cemeteries are being used as a pretext to confiscate more surrounding land and impose restrictions on its owners access to it, thus transforming these areas into closed enclaves that support long-term settlement expansion.
Besides, the occupation authorities are planning to begin implementing the settler Road 45 project. Yisrael Gantz, head of the so-called ‘Binyamin Regional Council’, announced that the project will commence in the coming weeks, with a budget estimated at NIS 400,000,000. A move aims to solidify the annexation of settlements north of Jerusalem and east of Ramallah and connect them to Jerusalem. The occupation authorities are treating the legal objections submitted by landowners in the villages of Jaba , Qalandiya, Kafr Aqab, Al-Ram, Mikhmas, and Burqa as mere formalities.
According to the Jerusalem Governorate, the project aims to -dir-ectly connect the settlements established east of Ramallah and north of Jerusalem to the settler Road 443, which leads to Jerusalem and the 1948 territories. The plan indicates that work will begin in front of the Mikhmas settlement in the east and extend to the Qalandia checkpoint tunnel in the west, thus shortening travel time for settlers and ensuring their -dir-ect connection to cities within Israel.
By carrying out ‘Road 45’, which comes in parallel with the expansion of bypass roads extending from the ‘Hizma checkpoint’ to the ‘Ayun Haramiya area’ east of Ramallah, the occupation authorities are working to create an interconnected road network that serves the settlements, turning northern Jerusalem and eastern Ramallah into isolated pockets within a geographical area controlled by the settlers.
The Jerusalem Governorate added that the project is an extension of an old plan dating back to 1983, within Military Order no. 50 for Roads, which aims to cut off Palestinian communities and isolate them behind bypass roads, through which the occupation seeks to integrate the infrastructure of the settlements into the central network, in an attempt to erase the Green Line and impose de facto sovereignty over the land, and to turn the settlements into residential suburbs linked to the center of the state via highways.
Though the occupation authorities have dealt for years with the legal objections submitted by the landowners in the villages of Jaba, Qalandia, Kafr Aqab, Al-Ram, Mikhmas, and Burqa, as mere formalities, as the ‘Civil Administration’ continued to issue tenders and begin field work, especially in the Qalandia tunnel, reflecting the occupation’s attempt to impose material facts that precede any judicial decision.
A comprehensive colonial vision aimed at attracting thousands of new settlers by providing a transportation network that allows them to live deep in the West Bank while maintain a quick connection to the city of Jerusalem, stressing that the plan is not-limit-ed to confiscating lands, but rather enshrines an integrated apartheid system, through the establishment of an advanced road network for the settlers at the expense of fragmenting the Palestinian geography and stifling the development prospects of the original landowners.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper revealed a plan to build 1,400 settlement units on the land where the headquarters of UNRWA stands in the Sheikh Jarrah Neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem. The project aims to -alter-the character of the area and use it for settlement purposes. The newspaper also reported that the so-called ‘Israel Land Authority’ is planning to evacuate UNRWA s headquarters in the Kafr Aqab Neighborhood, a move intended to end its presence in Jerusalem.
Last week, Israeli bulldozers began demolishing the agency s headquarters under the -dir-ect supervision of the extremist Israeli National Security Minister, Ben-Gvir, accompanied by the ‘Israel Land Authority’. The Jerusalem Governorate stated that the demolitions constitute a -dir-ect attack on a UN agency that enjoys international legal immunity, especially given the occupation s removal of the UN flag and raising the Israeli flag within the compound, under the pretext of lack of a permit, in flagrant violation of the sanctity of international institutions.
In Bethlehem, the occupation authorities are planning to establish a new settlement called ‘Shadma-Yitziv’ east of Beit Sahour, as part of efforts to expand settlements in the area on land classified as ‘state land’, at the site of an abandoned military camp formerly known as ‘Shadma’. According to Israeli reports, the new settlement will form a settlement extension to create geographical contiguity between the ‘Har Homa ‘Jabal Abu Ghneim’ settlement south of Jerusalem and the ‘Tekoa settlement’ southeast of Bethlehem. The inauguration ceremony, which included laying the foundation stone and cutting the ribbon, was attended by Smotrich, Settlement Minister Orit Strock, Gush Etzion Regional Council Chairman Yaron Rosenthal, Amana settlement movement leader Ze ev Hever, and the head of the Har Hamor religious institute, Rabbi Amiel Sternberg.
The establishment of the settlement at the aforementioned location is part of plans to expand settlement construction and consolidate control over areas east of Bethlehem, thereby encircling Palestinian communities and severing their geographical contiguity. According to Ch. 7, a settler-affiliated channel, settler Ephraim Shahor, one of the first families to move to the site, stated that ten families have settled in the new settlement so far, with expectations of additional families joining later, adding that the new settlement still faces challenges on the ground due to the extensive Palestinian surrounding area.
On another level, the violence of the occupation army and settler militias against Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities continues, with the aim of displacing them from their lands and encampments. The latest forced displacement of such communities affected 20 Palestinian families from the Al-Zayed clan last Monday, who were forced to dismantle their homes and sheds and leave the Al-Auja Bedouin community due to escalating harassment and attacks by settlers as part of an ongoing policy of forced displacement.
In addition to an attempt to displace the Khirbet Al-Marajem community, which belongs to the lands of Duma village in the Nablus Governorate, where settler militias stormed the lands adjacent to the citizens homes in the Khirbet last week and erected a fence on part of it with the aim of seizing it.
Noting here the widespread phenomenon of settler militia attacks, which have extended their control over vast areas of West Bank land on the eastern slopes overlooking the Jordan Valley, the control was established after the occupation government supplied settlers with machine guns, four-wheel-drive vehicles, drones, and communication devices to implement settlement expansion projects.
The settlers use advanced weapons and monitoring tools to pursue and displace Palestinian communities. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - OCHA, settlers committed more than 1,700 attacks against Palestinians in 270 locations across the West Bank during 2025. A recent report by the Israeli Human Rights Organization ‘B Tselem’ stated that settlers have displaced the residents of 44 Palestinian communities in the last 2 years and established settlement outposts in their place.
List of Israeli Assaults over the Last Week Documented by the National Bureau:
Jerusalem:
- Bulldozing olive farms in the Qalandia village, near the Apartheid W. The farms have been bulldozed 5 years ago under the pretext of being close to the Wall.
- Attacking the Khirbet Sidra Bedouin community near the Mikhmas town, resulted in two injuries. Two other international peace activists were also injured.
- Storming the Beit Iksa village in an attempt to seize a plot of land on the western side. They placed barbed wire around the land, a move aimed at imposing a new reality on the ground in preparation for its confiscation.
Hebron:
- Attacking Palestinians in the Huwara area of Masafer Yatta, released livestock into the vicinity of their homes, assaulted Issa Ali Atiyat.
- Attacking shepherds in the Wadi al-Rakheem area, injured an elderly man.
- Storming the Fakhit school in Masafer Yatta, drived camels into the schoolyard and surrounding residents homes. They also cut the fence surrounding agricultural land, damaged several trees, and vandalized a water tank belonging to Ahmed Mahmoud Hamamdeh.
- Erecting a new tent in the settlement outpost in the Hamroush area, east of the town of Sa ir.
- Demolishing a house in Khirbet al-Aida and forced its 10 residents to leave, without allowing them to take their belongings.
Bethlehem:
- Erecting 5 caravans in Osh Ghrab, east of Beit Sahour, to expand the settlement outpost recently established on Palestinian-owned land in the area.
- Storming the area surrounding Palestinian homes in the Kisan village, east of Bethlehem.
- Demolishing a commercial structure under construction, containing sheds, belonging to Fouad Zarina from Beit Jala, in the Jannata town, east of Bethlehem.
Ramallah:
- Blocking an agricultural road leading to the Abu Hamam area south of Al-Mughayyir, preventing residents from accessing their lands in the village.
- Grazing sheep on Palestinian-owned land, damaging crops in the town of Sinjil, settlers also attacked a house with stones on the northern outskirts of the town and destroyed security cameras in the surrounding area.
- Crazing their livestock on Palestinian-owned farmland in the Al-Khala il area, destroying crops and breaking several trees in the village of Al-Mughayyir, north of Ramallah.
- Demolishing the four-story home of Ibrahim Abu Farah in the town of Shuqba, west of Ramallah.
Nablus:
- Injuring Palestinians by settlers attack against several homes in the Yatma village. They assaulted residents and sprayed them with pepper spray.
- Erecting a fence around land in Khirbet al-Marajem, which belongs to the Duma town, with the aim of seizing it.
- Bulldozing structures in Khirbet al-Tawil, which belongs to the Aqraba town, 8 sheds and shelters were destroyed, including those used for housing and livestock, under the pretext that the structures were built in Area C.
- Burning 3 bulldozers, a vehicle, and other equipment at a quarry belonging to Issam Safadi in the village of Awarta.
Jordan Valley:
- Constructing a settlement road on land belonging to the Tammon town after storming the ‘Bir Al-Ma yar area’. The area leads to a settlement approved by the occupation government on the town land.
- Hindering the movement of Palestinian citizens and their access to their agricultural lands in the Atouf Plain.
- Releasing settlers livestock into wheat fields in Khirbet Ahmeir Al-Farsiyah in the northern Jordan Valley, causing significant damage to crops and the livelihoods of Palestinian families.
- Storming the Shallah Auja community and assaulted activists who were present in the area to show solidarity with Palestinian families threatened with displacement. This comes after 20 more families from the Zayed clan were forced to leave their homes and their livestock pens were dismantled in the Shallah Auja, north of Jericho, due to escalating settler attacks.

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