Despite the conflict with Palestine, Israeli settlers have been continuing to expand their illegal settlements in the West Bank with the help of the Israeli government

 by Edward Ulrich, January 26, 2025


[I wrote this article a while ago but never got around to posting it.  Note that Donald Trump has inappropriately revoked the sanctions that were imposed on the Israeli settlers in the West Bank, as this article explains.]




This video by a British television network explains that Israeli settlers who have been living illegally in the West Bank for years have been expanding more rapidly since the conflict started that was caused by the October 7th attacks.


Following are points from the video:

— Palestinians have been protesting the existence of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank for years, and Israeli soldiers often attack the protesters using tear gas and sometimes bullets, especially after the October 7th attacks.

— The UN has recently said that all of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank should be dismantled, however such settlements are actually expanding more rapidly than ever before.

[Note: I agree with what the UN has said about those matters since Israel has been committing atrocities in Palestine (link), and I think it is wrong for Israel to allow illegal settlements to exist in the occupied territories in the first place.  But note that the UN is a corrupt organization and “rulings” that it makes often cannot be trusted, as the following links explain. (link, link, and link)]

— Ultra hard-line Israeli setters who are being protested against by Palestinians see themselves as “pioneers on the land promised to them by God.”  An example is shown of an outpost that was previously considered to be illegal, but it was recognized by the Israel as being legitimate last month along with several others.

— Israel’s “far right” finance minister Bezalel Smotrich is a strong supporter of such settlers, and he is spearheading efforts to annex the entire West Bank.

— The settlers see what they are doing as “reclaiming their spiritual and ancestral homeland, and protecting it.”

— The settlements make a “two state solution” essentially impossible, and the settlers actually want that to be the case since they believe that the entire area should belong to Israel.

— About 700,000 settlers now live in the occupied West Bank in East Jerusalem, usually in large enclaves.

— The West Bank was seized by Israeli in the 1967 War.  Internationally it is all considered to be Palestinian land and the key to a future Palestinian State.

— Since the 1990’s, urban areas of West Bank area have been partially under the control of the Palestinian Authority, with the rest of the area under the control of the Israeli military.  But the territory is now dotted with Israeli settlements that are considered to be illegal, and there has been unprecedented growth of them during the past few years under Israel’s current hardline government.

— Violence by settlers targeting Palestinians has been rising sharply, as have attacks by Palestinians against Israelis since even before the October 7th attacks.

— Due to the Israeli army being entrenched in Palestine since the October 7th attacks, grass-roots support for Hamas in the West Bank has been soaring.

— A commenter is shown explaining that Israel’s hostile actions toward Palestine inflames extremism against Israel, which Israel then uses as an excuse to perpetrate more hostility toward the Palestinians— all while the West has not been attempting to push for any actual solution to the conflict.

— Hamas gains much support among Palestinians due to them not being given any other choices for dealing with the problems of losing their land and the Israeli military occupation.

— Several thousand Israeli settlers once occupied parts of the Gaza Strip, but they were forced out by the Israeli army almost two decades ago when Israel withdrew from the territory.  Some of them now see the current war as a chance to move back to that area.

— A radical fringe “far right” Zionist group who believes that the Gaza strip is Jewish land is portrayed, where they say that they see the war in Gaza as an opportunity to take it over again.  Some soldiers in Gaza show support for such groups, but the Israeli government has been saying that there is no prospect for reestablishing any settlements in that area.

— A Jewish woman from Texas, U.S.A who is a member of the group is interviewed, where she says that she hopes the Palestinians in Gaza will be relocated elsewhere, such as to Spain or Russia which are countries that have said they would take some of them.