UN: Israeli Settlement Expansion in West Bank Reaches Record Levels
DaysofPal- Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank has reached its highest level since the United Nations began systematically monitoring such activity in 2017, according to a new report by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
In a document submitted to members of the UN Security Council, Guterres said indicators of settlement growth peaked in 2024, marking an unprecedented surge in construction approvals and tenders. The report noted that plans were submitted, approved, or opened for tender for approximately 47,390 settlement housing units during the year, a sharp increase from around 26,170 units in 2023.
The figures represent a dramatic rise compared with previous years, the report said, pointing out that the annual average between 2017 and 2022 stood at roughly 12,800 settlement units.
Guterres strongly condemned the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, warning that such activities fuel tensions, deprive Palestinians of access to their land, and undermine the prospects for establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.
He stressed that settlement expansion entrenches Israeli unlawful occupation, violates international law, and infringes upon the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. The UN chief reiterated his call for an immediate halt to all settlement activity.
According to the report, more than 700,000 Israeli settlers currently live in settlements considered illegal under international law, among a Palestinian population of about three million in the West Bank.
These figures do not include occupied East Jerusalem, which the Israeli occupation annexed in a move not recognized internationally.
Guterres also expressed deep concern over a troubling rise in settler violence, including attacks allegedly carried out in some cases with the presence or support of Israeli security forces.
He warned that escalating violence and military operations have resulted in significant civilian casualties, including women and children, as well as widespread displacement and destruction of homes and infrastructure.
Israeli military operations in the West Bank have intensified since the outbreak of the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Since then, more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers, the report said, underscoring the deteriorating security and humanitarian situation in the occupied territory.
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Israeli settler groups have begun bulldozing Palestinian lands in the town of Beit Sahour to make way for a new settler outpost. The settlement threatens the existence of the largest remaining Christian community in the West Bank, residents say.
By Jeff Wright
Last month, Israeli settler groups began razing lands in the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour just east of Bethlehem. Before long, settlers placed caravans on a hilltop known by locals as Ush al-Ghurab and announced the establishment of a new settler outpost called Shdema.
A predominantly Christian town, residents of Beit Sahour tell Mondoweiss that the encroaching settler presence threatens the existence of the largest remaining Palestinian Christian community in the West Bank.
According to a report by the Balasan Initiative for Human Rights, the new Shdema outpost “marks a substantial escalation in Israel’s settlement expansion and territorial consolidation in the Bethlehem district.”
“The emergence of the Shdema settlement must be understood as part of a broader territorial strategy designed to reshape the demographic and geographic reality between Jerusalem and the Bethlehem hinterland,” the report states. “The consequences for Beit Sahour’s residents are significant and multifaceted.”
In a letter to supporters shared with Mondoweiss, Dr. Elias Iseed, mayor of Beit Sahour, wrote that this settlement “is not simply a construction project,” but “an act of dispossession.”
“It is being built directly upon Palestinians’ lands, homes, and backyards, stealing the soil from beneath peaceful families who have lived here for generations,” the mayor wrote.
According to the Balasan report, the 100 dunams (approximately 25 acres), “had been earmarked for public facilities.” These included “a children’s hospital to be built, recreational areas, cultural center, green space, and community hall, plans that had already begun implementation with donor support before settler pressure forced their suspension.”
According to Israeli settlement watchdog, Peace Now, the outpost “is intended to choke the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour and block its development,” adding that the site on which Shdema is being built has been reserved for Palestinian development projects for about 15 years, but that “there is no limit to the settlers’ audacity in establishing outposts and creating facts on the ground.”
According to the Balasan report, “only about 7% of Beit Sahour’s administrative land remains accessible for building due to settlement encirclement and the Annexation Wall.” This has caused an intensification of “demographic pressure” on the town, limiting its urban development and encouraging “the displacement of its population, mainly composed of Palestinian Christians.”
“Beyond its material impacts, the settlement plays a symbolic and cultural role in the ongoing effort to entrench an exclusive Zionist narrative in the area,” the report states. “Israeli settler groups have repeatedly invoked biblical justifications for taking over the site, despite archaeological evidence refuting such claims. These ideological assertions accompany attempts to rebrand the area as part of a ‘return of Jews to Bethlehem,’ a rhetoric deployed to normalize settler presence and obscure the illegality of the project under international law.”
As mayor Iseed writes, the West Bank has already witnessed a historic rise in settler violence:
“According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there were 757 settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank since January 2025, a 13% increase compared to 2024. These attacks include assaults, destruction of property, and intimidation, often carried out with impunity.”
Yusef Daher, Coordinator of the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches, tells Mondoweiss that settler encroachment has devastated local communities, “because we have neither the time nor the strength to stop this land grab.”
“We are an unarmed people enduring extremely violent Israeli settler gangs under the protection of their army and ministers,” Daher said.
The Balasan report asserts that the establishment of Shdema constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of the civilian population of the occupying power to the territory it occupies and proscribes the expropriation of land.
“The outpost further contributes to the creation of irreversible facts on the ground, undermining the right of the Palestinian population to self-determination and violating obligations of the occupying power to protect property and ensure public order and civil life,” the report states. “In this context, the establishment and expansion of the Shdema outpost are not isolated violations but form part of an unlawful territorial regime that the International Court of Justice [in its July 2024 Advisory Opinion] found incompatible with international law.”
“By entrenching and expanding civilian settlements on confiscated Palestinian land Israel both deepens the illegality identified by the Court and exacerbates its obligations of cessation and non-recognition,” the report added.
Consequently, the Shdema outpost, which “reinforces an internationally unlawful situation,” must be brought to an end by third States, the report concludes.
Rifat Kassis, General Coordinator of Kairos Palestine and a resident of Beit Sahour, told Mondoweiss that the settlement “is a direct assault on the heart of the Christian presence in Palestine.”
“By confiscating what remains of our towns’ open spaces and tightening the ring of settlements around Beit Sahour and Bethlehem, this project threatens the very existence of the largest remaining Christian community in the Holy Land,” Kassis said. “If allowed to continue, it will be the last nail in the coffin of the Christians’ presence in Palestine, accelerating displacement, severing social cohesion, and pushing more families to forced migration.”
“We make this plea not because we expect political leaders — whose governments consistently choose their interests with Israel over justice for the oppressed — to change their course,” Kassis explained. “We write it so that our own descendants will know that we were not silent, and so that the future generations of those governments will know that their ancestors stood by in silence while a people, and a Christian heritage rooted in this land for two millennia, were being pushed toward erasure.”
December 14, 2025
Israeli soldiers stand by as Israeli construction vehicles destroy agricultural lands and uproot centuries-old olive trees in the village of Karyut, south of the city of Nablus, West Bank on December 08, 2025. [Issam Rimawi – Anadolu Agency]
Illegal Israeli settlers damaged about 40 olive trees on Sunday in the town of Mukhmas, northeast of East Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, according to local authorities, Anadolu reports.
In a statement, the Jerusalem Governorate said illegal settlers raided the al-Hayy area of Mukhmas and cut down roughly 40 olive trees owned by a Palestinian resident.
The governorate described the attack as part of an ongoing pattern of violence targeting Palestinians and their land, adding that it followed the Israeli army’s demolition days earlier of a park and playground in the town as pressure mounted to assert control over the area.
Illegal settlers recently established an outpost near Mukhmas that has become a gathering point and staging area for repeated attacks on local farmers and agricultural land, the statement added.
According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, an official body, illegal Israeli settlers carried out 621 attacks against Palestinians and property in the occupied West Bank in November.
Israeli forces and illegal settlers have killed at least 1,093 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, injured nearly 11,000, and detained around 21,000 since October 2023, according to Palestinian figures.
In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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