19 settlements legalized in Judea and Samaria

The move is in addition to 22 settlements regularized in May.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The government legalized 19 settlements throughout Judea and Samaria Thursday, including two that were forcibly evacuated during the 2005 Disengagement.

“The announcement of the re-establishment of the settlements of Ganim and Kadim is another step in correcting the folly of the expulsion from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria,” the Nahala settler movement said in a statement celebrating the move.

It is “an important decision and a clear statement that the entire Land of Israel is ours,” the group added.

The other two northern Samaria villages emptied two decades ago, Homesh and Sa-Nur, had already been approved for re-establishment — Homesh in December 2023 and Sa-Nur in May, when its status was regularized along with 21 other settlements.

Those settlements are scattered across several regions in Judea and Samaria, including the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea area, the Hebron Hills, and the Benjamin district.

While Ganim and Kadim stood empty for the last 20 years, many of the other communities now approved are well-established, with dozens of families living there.

Israeli right-wingers believe their presence enhances security by deterring Palestinian terror attacks.

Several of the young settlements were erected at the outer perimeters of existing villages to prevent Palestinians from making an illegal grab for state land designated for Jewish housing.

Due to their previously unauthorized status, residents often lived under suboptimal conditions, including unreliable electricity and water supply, reduced IDF protection and the ongoing threat of eviction by Israeli authorities.

The Cabinet vote approving the proposal by Defense Minister Yisrael Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was unanimous.

Smotrich also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry, overseeing Jewish settlements, land management and planning, as well as enforcement of building laws against Palestinians in Area C.

Wildcat construction there has steadily encroached into Israeli territory, particularly along the seam line between the areas under Palestinian and Israeli civil control.

According to Ynet, the Trump administration was informed ahead of the vote.

About half of the newly legalized communities are located near the border of the territory liberated by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, and the rest are deeper inside.

Many of the 22 settlements authorized in May are also well within Judea and Samaria, alarming and angering Palestinians who envision the territory as a Jew-free Palestinian state.

Smotrich, a religious nationalist who has never made a secret of his desire to stop the formation of a “terror state” in Israel’s heartland, has described the approvals as “advancing de facto [Israeli] sovereignty on the ground to prevent any possibility of establishing an Arab state in Judea and Samaria.”

The flurry of settlement approvals this year stands in sharp contrast to the past three decades, when almost no new villages were authorized, even under right-wing governments.