Israel’s government is expected to allocate hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming days to rapidly expand Jewish settlement across the occupied West Bank ahead of national elections this fall.
In a major push, the government is rushing to place temporary housing at about 60 empty sites, according to a draft of the proposal reviewed by The New York Times and an official with direct knowledge of the details. The official requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
If the plan goes forward as expected, the government will declare the new settlement points “temporary sites” and will fund the placement of 15 mobile homes and two additional community structures on each, according to the proposal draft. The intention is to create new realities on the ground and make physical changes to the territory that will be difficult to reverse if the country’s current leaders are not re-elected.
The government had been expected to approve the proposal on Thursday, but it decided to refer it to the smaller security cabinet for approval on Sunday. Security cabinet decisions can remain confidential, and the government has been trying to keep the move under the radar to avoid international attention, the official said.
The expansion would tighten Israel’s hold over land that much of the world has long envisioned as part of a future Palestinian state.
“The government is on a reckless pre-election sprint to raid the public purse in order to create facts on the ground that will leave a scorched-earth policy for the next government,” Peace Now, an Israeli activist group that opposes settlement, said in a statement on Thursday.
The group said there had been an 80 percent increase in settlements since the government was established in late 2022.
Mr. Netanyahu’s government has long focused on expanding West Bank settlement with the stated goal of preventing the rise of a Palestinian state on the territory. Most of the world views the settlements as a violation of international law.
Israel argues that the West Bank land is disputed territory and its fate should be determined in negotiations. But there have been no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for more than a decade and none are on the horizon. Many in the government want Israel to declare sovereignty over at least part of the West Bank.
The settlement expansion is one of a number of contentious changes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition are pushing through before elections. Once an exact date for the election is set, the government is supposed to refrain from making major decisions that can bind a future government.
One of the biggest settlement expansions in years, Thursday’s decision is designed to hastily turn the sites into instant communities dotting the West Bank. Funding is also being allocated to build infrastructure and for a core groups of settlers to inhabit the sites, making it harder for any future government to remove them.
The government has approved the establishment of dozens of new settlements in a series of cabinet decisions since taking office, in what critics have characterized as a massive land grab. It has also retroactively authorized outposts that were illegal even by Israel’s standards, after being set up without explicit government authorization, in some cases decades ago.
“Since the beginning of our term, we have led a revolution in Judea and Samaria,” Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister and chief settlement promoter, said recently in Parliament, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names.
“We have approved more than 100 new settlements, tens of thousands of housing units and no less than 160 new farms,” he added, referring to small, rural settlement points that use livestock and other agricultural means to control vast tracts of land.
More than half a million Israeli settlers live in the West Bank among about three million Palestinians.
The government had already approved the 60 locations slated for settlement a few months ago, but the sites have not yet been through official planning and authorization procedures, a process that usually takes years. The unusual decision planned for Sunday will allow the government to circumvent those procedures.
The expansion push follows a surge in settler violence in the West Bank in recent years. With the world largely distracted by wars in the Middle East, extremist settlers have intensified their attacks on Palestinians and their property across the West Bank in a violent campaign of intimidation that has emptied out entire Palestinian villages.
Israeli attitudes toward Palestinians have generally hardened since the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which ignited the war in Gaza. Nevertheless, Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition has lost some of its support and Mr. Smotrich is eager to show his settler constituency that he can deliver on his promises.
Funding has been allocated for the new sites over the next two to three years for mobile homes, community facilities, team-building professionals to help create strong communities and other amenities.
In early May, the Netanyahu government approved more than a billion shekels, or about $340,000,000, for roads connecting the newly approved settlements, saying they were necessary for their development and for strengthening their hold over the territory.
