Since December 2025, Israeli authorities have unleashed a series of unlawful measures deliberately designed to dispossess Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to make the annexation of the territory an irreversible reality, Amnesty International said today.
These decisions represent an unprecedented escalation – in scale and speed – in Israel’s project to expand illegal settlements. They facilitate the takeover of more Palestinian land, authorize a record number of new settlements, expanding existing ones, and formalize registration of land in the West Bank as Israeli state property. While successive Israeli governments have pursued policies aimed at expanding settlements and entrenching occupation and apartheid, the latest measures underscore how the current Israeli government has turbocharged these efforts, in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza.
“What we are witnessing is a state, led by a Prime Minister wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, openly gloating about its defiance of international law. Despite hundreds of UN resolutions, Advisory Opinions from the International Court of Justice and global condemnation, Israel continues to brazenly expand illegal settlements, entrenching its cruel system of apartheid and destroying Palestinian lives and livelihoods,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.
“The unconditional support of the USA government, combined with the pervasive lack of international accountability for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, decades of crimes under international law linked to its unlawful occupation and its system of apartheid, has further emboldened Israel to escalate its illegal actions. This includes formalizing land grabs with full confidence that it will face no consequences
The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action.
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.
“The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action. Third states have failed to respect their own legal obligations, refusing to use the tools at their disposal, such as suspension of the EU Israel Association Agreement, to deter Israel from pursuing its unlawful agenda.”
On 10 December 2025 the Israel Land Authority published a tender for 3,401 housing units in the E1 area, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank. The plan seeks to expand the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and create a continuum with occupied East Jerusalem. This would sever the West Bank in two, permanently rupturing urban Palestinian contiguity between Ramallah, occupied East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. Together with the construction of a bypass road which is set to begin this month, this plan will also lead to the forcible transfer of the Palestinian communities living in the area.
While since the 1990s successive Israeli governments have attempted to implement the E1 plan, it remained largely dormant for decades due to international pressure. Its current advancement with such speed signifies a government that is brazenly pursuing its settlement expansion agenda amidst insufficient international pushback.
Since its occupation of Palestinian territory in 1967, Israel has introduced and developed an oppressive administrative and legal architecture of dispossession and control against Palestinians. The current government has been relentlessly accelerating this project by fast-tracking settlement expansion and land seizures. On 11 December 2025 Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to establish 19 new settlements, bringing the total number approved by the current coalition government to 68 in just three years and the total number of official settlements to about 210. Around 750,000 Israeli settlers currently live illegally in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The new settlements include the retroactive “legalization” of outposts built in violation of even Israel’s own domestic laws. Credible media reports indicate at least three of these sites sit upon land from which Palestinian communities, such as Ein Samia and Ras Ein al-Ouja, were recently forcibly transferred following state-backed settler violence.
According to Peace Now, an Israeli organization monitoring settlement expansion, in 2025 alone, a record 86 outposts were established, primarily “herding” or “farming” outposts” which have significantly contributed to the spike in state-backed settler violence and forcible transfer of Palestinian communities. Protected by the Israeli military and funded by the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, the outposts have turned the lives of Palestinian farmers and shepherds, particularly in Area C, into a living hell. Settlers in the outposts aggressively prevent Palestinian shepherds from accessing their grazing land, depriving them of their main livelihood, as well as seizing land by force, vandalizing property, stealing livestock and attacking Palestinians and their homes.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 21 Palestinian communities were fully or partially uprooted in 2025 as a result of state-backed settler violence. A mother of three from Ras Ein al-Ouja, near Jericho, told Amnesty International: “The fear of attacks forced us to put our children to bed with their shoes on, because we might have to flee at any moment.” In January 2026, she and her family were driven out in the freezing cold along with another 122 families; in total more than 600 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from this community.
A declaration by the Israeli civil administration on 5 January 2026 designating 694 dunams of land belonging to the Palestinian towns of Deir Istiya, Bidya and Kafr Thulth in the northern West Bank as “state land”, along with a series of measures to expand control over the West Bank announced by Israel’s security cabinet on 8 February marked a further escalation in Israel’s land grabs.
These measures include repealing Jordanian legislation still in force to allow Israeli settlers to purchase Palestinian land without oversight increasing Israeli civil administrative control over planning and construction in Hebron City and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, as well as granting Israeli authorities new enforcement powers in archaeological sites and in issues related to water and environment in Areas A and B.
On 15 February 2026 the Israeli cabinet issued a decision that amounts to annexation under Israeli law. It allocated over 244 million NIS (Israeli shekels) for the establishment of a government mechanism to facilitate land registration in Area C, transferring the powers of land registration from the civil administration to Israel’s Ministry of Justice.
Currently, nearly 58% of the land in Area C of the occupied West Bank is unregistered, according to Peace Now. Israel has already seized more than half of that area through state land designations. Palestinians face almost insurmountable hurdles to prove land ownership due to Israel’s archaic interpretation of Ottoman land laws which require Palestinians to provide an array of documents, maps and other records that most Palestinians do not have access to.
Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it. Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions.
Erika Guevara-Rosas
“Land registration is yet another Israeli euphemism for land grabs and dispossession. Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it. Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions,” Erika Guevara-Rosas said.
“Israel has totally disregarded its obligations as an Occupying Power towards Palestinian civilians and instead has deliberately and consistently advance its aggressive annexation agenda, in blatant violation of international law, which categorically prohibits annexation and establishment of settlements in occupied territory.
“These measures are in brazen defiance of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinions of 2004 and 2024, the latter of which unequivocally found Israel’s presence in the OPT to be unlawful. A subsequent UN General Assembly resolution set September 2025 as the deadline to end Israel’s unlawful occupation. Yet instead of complying, Israel has simply invented new ways to violate international law, further entrenching its unlawful occupation and apartheid – while the international community continues, at best, to pay lip service to Palestinians’ rights and taken no effective action.”