How Israel is expanding settlements in drive to reshape West Bank

What the report says

BBC World News reports that Israel has accelerated settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, with the latest focus on the sensitive E1 area east of Jerusalem. The article says tenders have been opened for about 1,200 new settlement homes on land that Palestinians claim for a future state, prompting condemnation from the United Nations and several European governments. Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas urged the critics to take practical steps to stop the plan.

The report places the move in the wider context of a broader rise in construction, road building and settlement growth since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2022, and especially since the Gaza war began after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. BBC analysis cited in the piece says settlements such as Tzofim and Kochav Hashahar have also expanded, while new roads and outposts have been built across the territory. The article notes that Israel has established roughly 160 settlements housing about 700,000 Jews since 1967, despite international law treating the settlements as illegal.

BBC World News says E1 is seen as especially controversial because development there could split the West Bank and further isolate East Jerusalem, making a contiguous Palestinian state harder to achieve. Israeli officials and settlement supporters, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have framed the work as part of a long-term effort to entrench Israeli control. The report also describes a rise in settler violence and says the issue is feeding fears among Palestinians and others that settlement expansion is creating irreversible realities on the ground ahead of upcoming Israeli elections.