114 new Israeli settlement outposts built in West Bank since 2023: report

Israeli settlers have established 114 new outposts across the occupied West Bank over the past two years, according to a report released on Sunday by the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, which called the scale of expansion "unprecedented" in the history of the occupation.

Marking two years since what it described as the "war of extermination", the Commission said the number of new outposts represents a nearly 60 percent increase compared with the 190 that existed before 7 October 2023.

Speaking at a press conference in Ramallah, Commission head Moayyad Shaaban said the figures reveal "an unprecedented policy of land theft and the imposition of new realities".

"The Palestinian territories over the past two years have turned into a laboratory for unprecedented colonial policies, where the last remaining occupation on earth tests the arts of killing, subjugation, and geographical domination," he added.

According to the report, Israel has confiscated around 55,000 dunams (13,600 acres) of Palestinian land during the same period - nearly half the total land seized since the 1993 Oslo Accords - often under the label of "state land".

The confiscations were executed through 108 military seizure orders, 25 of which created buffer zones around settlements, as well as 14 state land declarations and six expropriation orders targeting Palestinian nature reserves.

Shaaban said Israel has allocated 16,000 dunams of the seized land for settler grazing, describing it as "further evidence that the occupation state sponsors armed settler terrorism under the pretext of grazing and agriculture".

The report added that Israel has reclassified 13 settlement neighbourhoods as independent settlements, approved 22 new settlements, and legalised 11 previously unauthorised outposts through government decisions. The government also moved to provide full infrastructure to 68 agricultural outposts to solidify their status.

Shaaban said these actions amount to a “systematic apartheid regime” operating “in broad daylight, in defiance of international law,” adding that they reflect “a deliberate policy aimed at dismantling Palestinian geography and transforming military occupation into permanent civilian colonisation.”

The report documented 1,667 demolition notices issued to Palestinians and 1,014 demolitions carried out, resulting in the destruction of 1,288 structures. It also recorded 916 military checkpoints and gates across the West Bank, including 243 new iron gates installed since October 2023.

Since that date, the Commission said, Israeli forces and settlers have carried out 38,359 assaults, including 7,154 by settlers, leading to the deaths of 33 Palestinians and fires that damaged 767 fields and properties.

Shaaban said these figures show the recent wave of violence and land seizures “is neither accidental nor a reaction, but rather the rapid execution of long-prepared plans under the cover of war and extermination.”

Amir Dawood, director of documentation and publication at the Commission, told The New Arab's Arabic edition Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the data prove Israel’s actions "are premeditated and not responses to October 7". 

"The occupation wants to eliminate any possibility of a future Palestinian state through official mechanisms - laws, settlement expansion, and the militias of settlers imposing new realities on the ground," he said.

The Commission’s director of popular action added that settler attacks are now "organised and coordinated", with assailants using messaging groups to plan assaults.

"After October 7, there was a decision to forcibly expel Bedouin communities at gunpoint. These measures displaced 35 communities, with full government support - financial, legal, and military," he said.