Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has rolled out an expansive five-year blueprint to channel 2.7 billion shekels (about $837 million USD) into enlarging and entrenching Israeli settlements throughout the occupied West Bank.
The initiative envisions the creation of 17 new settlement sites, the reinforcement of dozens more, and a sweeping upgrade of infrastructure in territories slated for deeper Israeli control.
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The funding covers everything from water, sewage, and electricity networks to public buildings, including synagogues, schools, and community centers.
The proposal also includes “absorption warehouses” stocked with roughly 20 caravans intended for incoming settler families, a tactic designed to accelerate demographic entrenchment and facilitate future expansion.
The settlement package is only one layer of a broader strategy to tighten Zionist authority beyond the 1948 line.
The plan pairs new road networks with the relocation of military bases and administrative restructuring—steps that effectively advance annexation under another name.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced Monday that he’s allocating 2.7 billion shekels for the establishment of 17 new settlements in the West Bank over the next five years.
This decision comes as part of the government’s plan to strengthen settlement infrastructure… pic.twitter.com/Y4Z714DTms
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 8, 2025
Zionist Pressure on Palestinian Communities
Alongside the settlement drive, Israeli authorities are tightening pressure on Palestinian communities in and around occupied East Jerusalem and the northern Jordan Valley. A mix of demolitions, land seizures, and movement restrictions has accelerated what Palestinian officials and rights groups describe as a systematic push toward de facto annexation.
Last week, demolition orders were delivered for more than ten residential and agricultural structures near the Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin community southeast of Jerusalem, according to the Jerusalem Governorate.
These notices fit into a mounting pattern: in November 2025 alone, officials recorded 27 demolitions and bulldozing operations—five of them carried out by residents under threat of steep fines, 21 executed by municipal crews, and one land plot razed entirely.
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