Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement Report, covering everything you need to know about Israeli settlement and annexation activity this week.
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January 31, 2025
- Bill to Allow Israelis to Buy West Bank Land Advances in Knesset
- Weekly Settlement Advancements Continue for Ninth Week
- On First Day in Office, Trump Cancels Sanctions on Violent Settlers
- Bonus Reads
Bill to Allow Israelis to Buy West Bank Land Advances in Knesset
On January 29th, the Israeli Knesset’s plenum approved the preliminary reading of a bill (58 – 33) that will allow Israelis to purchase land in the West Bank without any restrictions. In response, Peace Now called this “annexation and apartheid.”
Under the current law, private, non-Arab individuals cannot purchase land in the West Bank. In 1971, the law was amended to add a loophole allowing companies registered to operate in the West Bank (like the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish National Fund) to purchase property, and often do so only to give it to Israeli settlers. This additional change would open the door for private purchases across the West Bank by settlers and their backers, including in the heart of Palestinian cities. Notably, Israeli security officials have in the past objected to changing this law, based on their recognition of the fact that settlers implanting themselves wherever they want in the West Bank – including in acts intended to be deliberately provocative – will be a security nightmare for the IDF and will enable settlers and their financial patrons to further hijack the national security agenda of the state of Israel.
MK Aida Touma-Sliman wrote:
“Annexation on steroids: The bill that was approved in preliminary reading in the Knesset plenary now removes another obstacle on the way to a complete takeover of the West Bank. In serious violation of international law, Israel behaves as a sovereign in an occupied territory and promotes de jure annexation, a colonialism that is brazenly called “equality”. The approval of the bill today is a direct continuation of structural changes carried out in the area, including construction permits, declaration of state lands, construction of outposts in Area B, road construction, transfer of civil administration powers to Messianic ministers and more. The annexation is no longer crawling, not racing, it is carried out slowly but surely.”
Peace Now writes:
“This is yet another annexation move initiated by the messianic right. The proposal seeks to allow settlers to purchase land without any oversight throughout the West Bank, effectively making them ‘landlords’ in the West Bank in both symbolic and practical terms. The bill would give a small number of extremist settlers the ability to acquire land and later establish settlements, whether in the heart of Hebron or anywhere else and drag the IDF to risk soldiers’ lives and protect them. Furthermore, the Knesset has no authority to legislate laws for areas that are not under Israeli sovereignty, and the attempt to apply Knesset laws to the occupied territory constitutes annexation and a blatant violation of international law.”
Yesh Din explains:
“The law aims to ease the purchase of land in the occupied territory by settlers and to expand the settlement enterprise. It seeks to establish permanent changes in land ownership in the West Bank by enabling, for the first time, individual Israelis to buy land directly instead of the current requirement to buy land through companies registered with the Civil Administration Companies Registry. This kind of ownership would be permanent and irreversible.
The name of the law and its explanatory notes are misleading. The bill presents itself as fixing an ongoing injustice of alleged discrimination against settlers. In reality, the land regime in the West Bank enacts blatant discrimination in which 99% of the public (‘state’) lands are allocated to settlements. If the legislation is fully enacted, it will not only futher entrench the existing discrimination but ease and facilitate the purchase of West Bank lands by Israeli settlers.
Additionally, and no less significantly, legislation by the Israeli Knesset regarding the occupied territory constitutes the application of Israeli sovereignty to the occupied land, in violation of international law, which prohibits annexation.”
Weekly Settlement Advancements Continue for Ninth Week
Peace Now reports the Israeli High Planning Council advanced plans for the construction of 682 settlement units on January 29th. The units are planned for three settlements:
- Halamish – plans for 531 new units were deposited for public review. If approved, these plans will double the number of houses there.
- Mitzad – plans for 126 new units were deposited for public review. And,
- Peduel – plans for 25 new units received final approval.
This marks the continuation of the weekly convening of the High Planning Council in order to greenlight massive settlement construction.
On First Day in Office, Trump Cancels Sanctions on Violent Settlers
On January 20th – the same day he took office – President Trump announced that he will rescind the February 2024 Executive Order under which the Biden Administration implemented sanctions against Israeli settlers and settler-aligned organizations alleged to have participated in violence in the West Bank. The U.S. Treasury Department officially lifted the sanctions on January 24th.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called Trump’s move an “expression of your deep connection to the Jewish people and our historical right to our land.”
Executive Order 14115 issued on Feb. 1, 2024, which authorized the imposition of certain sanctions “on Persons Undermining Peace,
In a statement, the U.S. advocacy group DAWN said in a statement:
“President Trump’s decision to revoke the U.S. government’s only sanctions against violent settlers and malign settlement organizations driving land theft and settler violence isn’t only a slap in the face to millions of Palestinians enduring decades of terrorist pogroms, but erodes what little hope we have that Trump will succeed in establishing a Palestinian state,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. “Instead, Trump is kowtowing to his vicious pro-Israel donor base who were apoplectic at efforts to hold extremist Israelis accountable and convinced him to revoke the sanctions.”
Bonus Reads
- “Humanitarian Situation Update #260 | West Bank” (OCHA)
- “As Ceasefire Nears, Jared Kushner’s New Investments Could Boost Israeli Settlements” (The Lever)
- “US: Sanction Jewish National Fund-Israel (KKL-JNF) for Funding Settlement Expansion and Fostering Settler Violence” (DAWN)
- “From Gaza to the West Bank: Israel’s Shifting Fire and the Cost of Impunity” (CIHRS)
- “Jenin is ‘only the beginning’: Israel moves its war on Palestinians to the West Bank” (Mondoweiss)
- “Israel is shifting its battlefield from Gaza to the West Bank” (The New Arab)
- “Online Calls to Action Preceded a Settler Onslaught in the West Bank, and Once Again Palestinians Were Left Unprotected” (Haaretz)
- “Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich Appoints West Bank Council Chief as Ministry Director” (Haaretz)