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Annexation by settlements
A joint report by Peace Now and Kerem Navot, titled Annus Mirabilis: Actions by the Israeli Government to Annex the West Bank, 2023–2025, concludes that Israel has advanced de facto annexation of the West Bank at an unprecedented pace since taking office in December 2022.
The report says the Israeli government reshaped control through structural governance changes, settlement expansion, retroactive authorization of outposts, land seizures and the expulsion of Palestinian communities, and it identifies the transfer of broad civilian powers to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and the Settlement Administration within the Defense Ministry as a key change.
The report’s figures include 185 new outposts established, 118 Palestinian shepherding communities and shepherding clusters expelled, and 40,064 housing units advanced in settlements.
It also estimates that farm outposts now effectively control more than 1.1 million dunams, including approximately 750,000 dunams seized since the current government took office, and it says at least 223 kilometres of new roads opened across the West Bank.
Smotrich’s role and numbers
Anadolu Ajansı reports that Israel advanced plans for 40,064 new settlement housing units over the past three years, which the report says could enable future growth of 160,000 to 200,000 occupiers.
In 2025 alone, the report says 27,941 units were advanced, more than double the previous annual record, and it highlights the E1 area as a plan that would further fragment the West Bank and undermine Palestinian territorial continuity between Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
The report also says the Israeli government strengthened the Ministry of Settlement and National Missions, led by Orit Strook, as a channel for hundreds of millions of shekels to organizations involved in settlement expansion and land takeover.
Peace Now and Kerem Navot estimate that farm outposts play a central role in expulsion and dispossession, estimating that they now control more than 1 million dunams, or about 18% of the West Bank, and it says occupiers added about 300,000 dunams to areas they control through farm outposts in 2025.
Condemnations and land registration
On February 23, RFI reports that nearly 20 countries from Brazil to Saudi Arabia, including France and Spain, condemned with the greatest firmness steps taken by Israel to strengthen its control over the West Bank.
RFI says the foreign ministers wrote in a joint statement that "These latest decisions are part of a manifest strategy aimed at altering the situation on the ground and pursuing an unacceptable de facto annexation," and they called on Israel "to immediately reverse these decisions" and "to respect its international obligations."
Le Parisien reports that a week after approving a text facilitating land purchases by settlers in the West Bank, the Israeli security cabinet gave its green light to the launch of a land-registration process that would record an Israeli title of ownership on these lands.
Le Parisien adds that the vote-adopted resolution allocates a budget of 244 million shekels for the land-registration process during 2026 to 2030 in Area C, and it quotes Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich saying, "We are pursuing the colonization revolution and strengthening our grip over the whole of our territory," after the vote on land measures.
