2025 was record year for settlement expansion, construction and planning, NGO finds

Times of Israel · Feb 25, 2026 · Collected from RSS

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The West Bank settlement movement recorded an unprecedented year in 2025, with records broken — and in some cases surpassed by wide margins — across multiple measures of expansion in the contested territory, according to figures from an anti-settlement watchdog. An annual review by the Peace Now organization found that a record number of legal settlements were either approved or retroactively legalized in 2025; a record number of illegal settlement outposts were established; a record number of housing units were approved in the planning process; and tenders for the construction of a record number of housing units were published. The group criticized the government, saying that while it had failed to provide homes and rehabilitation for the thousands of Israelis evacuated from the north and south during the wars following the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre, “in the settlements the government is like a well-oiled machine, investing billions and promoting construction and planning, for the benefit of a handful of settlers in the government’s camp.” Peace Now pointed to massive infrastructure projects that were aimed at solidifying Israel’s hold over the West Bank — which the Palestinians claim for a future state — including the construction of a major traffic artery connecting the Binyamin region of the West Bank with the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, breaking ground just this week. Speaking earlier this week, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the primary architect of this government’s unprecedented expansion of the settlements, enthused that the highway “changes the reality on the ground and imposes de facto sovereignty [over the West Bank].” Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories By signing up, you agree to the terms Smotrich said the project would “deepen our grip on the homeland” and constitute “a targeted assassination of the idea of ​​a Palestinian state.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (right) and Binyamin Regional Council head Israel Ganz admire plans for a new highway connecting the West Bank settlements with central Israel, February 24, 2026. (Courtesy Binyamin Regional Council) Most of the international community considers all Israeli settlements illegal under international law. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967 and has never formally annexed the area, parts of which are controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Peace Now’s annual report said 54 settlements were approved by the government last year — an all-time high — shattering the previous record of nine new settlements set by the same government in 2023, a sixfold increase. Of these 54 new settlements, 26 were illegal outposts which the government retroactively legalized, and 14 were brand new settlements. Another 14 were so-called settlement “neighborhoods,” often established miles from the parent settlement to sidestep the lack of legal authorization for what is effectively a new settlement. Alongside the newly approved and legalized settlements, 86 illegal outposts were established in 2025 — another record. The top three years for the largest number of illegal outposts established have all come within the three-year tenure of the current government, with 32 established in 2023 and 62 in 2024, Peace Now’s figures show. Before 2023, the average number of illegal outposts established every year since 1991 was six, although the average from 2018 to 2022 was already on the rise at around 12 per year. Settlement outposts lack government authorization and are therefore technically illegal under Israeli law. The current government has, however, funneled state funding to such illegal outposts through multiple ministries, including security equipment, subsidized livestock purchases for farming outposts and support for volunteers working there. Shdema, a West Bank outpost erected at the site of a former IDF base with the backing of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, is pictured on the backdrop of Beit Sahour, a neighboring Palestinian town, the morning after the outpost’s establishment on November 20, 2025. (Courtesy Gush Etzion Regional Council) Of the 86 new outposts, 58 were farming outposts. The stated goal of the activists who establish such wildcat settlements is to take control of large swaths of West Bank territory through grazing livestock. Farming outposts have frequently served as focal points for violence against and harassment of Palestinians living in the vicinity of those outposts. Last year also proved to be a record year for the approval of the construction of housing units through the planning process, with 27,491 units approved in 2025, nearly double the previous record from 2023 of 14,623. Among those projects approved in the planning process was the highly controversial E1 development as a westward extension of the Maale Adumim settlement city, which lies just east of Jerusalem. In September, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a government agreement with Maale Adumim whereby the state will invest some NIS 3 billion ($970 million) in upgrading infrastructure for the E1 development, which will include at least 3,400 housing units, and likely several more thousand at a later stage. And 2025 was also a record year for the number of housing units for which construction tenders were issued. After a construction project for housing units is approved in the planning process, tenders are then published for construction companies to bid on in order to build those units. In 2025, tenders were published for the construction of 9,629 units in the West Bank settlements. The new highway will shorten the travel time to the country’s center for the residents of the Binyamin region settlements by 15 minutes, according to planners, and will cost NIS 400 million ($130 million). The route will include four bridges and an underground passage in the area of the Palestinian city of Qalandia, and will enable settlers to avoid the congested Hizma checkpoint at the entrance to East Jerusalem on their way to Tel Aviv and other cities in the country’s center. Head of the Binyamin Regional Council Israel Ganz, who also heads the Yesha Council settlements umbrella organization, said Route 45 would “change the face of the area,” and was a “crushing riposte” to efforts to establish a Palestinian state. “We are strengthening security and creating continuity between Binyamin and the center of the country… Together, we are making Binyamin and Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] into an inseparable part of our country.”