The Israeli government said Wednesday that it has completed plans for the first new apartheid settlement in the occupied West Bank since 2017, a move the country's far-right finance minister said was due in part to increasing international recognition of Palestinian statehood amid Israel's obliteration of Gaza and a recent World Court affirming the occupation's illegality.
The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, also known as the Civil Administration, announced what's known as a "blue line"—which defines and delimits the boundaries of a new settlement—for Nahal Heletz, one of five Jewish-only colonies
proposed for construction or expansion on stolen Palestinian land. If built, the nearly 150-acre colony would connect the Gush Etzion settlement bloc with Jerusalem.
"The connection of Gush Etzion to Jerusalem by establishing a new settlement is a historic moment," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a settler,
said Wednesday. "No anti-Israel and anti-Zionist decision will stop the continued development of the settlement enterprise."
"We will continue to fight the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state and establish facts on the ground," Smotrich continued, referring to the longtime Israeli practice of violating international law by colonizing and annexing Palestinian land to establish what one legal scholar
described as "de facto possession with the aim of attaining de jure possession."
Smotrich added: "This is my life's mission and I will continue it as long as I can... Together we will continue to pursue Zionism. We will build, develop, fight, and win."
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an "occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." Since Israel conquered the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and Syria's Golan Heights in 1967, Israeli settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to more than 500,000 today.
Settlers often destroy property and attack Palestinians, sometimes en masse in deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into leaving so their land can be stolen. As the world's attention is focused on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 500 Palestinians in the West Bank since October, including at least 143 children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund.
Last month, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is on trial for genocide over its conduct in the Gaza war—ruled that Israel's 57-year occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must end "as rapidly as possible."
The Gaza war, in which Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 143,000 Palestinians, forcibly displaced almost all of the territory's 2.3 million people, starved hundreds of thousands of people—some of them to death—and flattened much of the coastal enclave, has also pushed numerous nations to recognize Palestinian statehood. Around 150 countries now support Palestinian independence. In April, the United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Palestinian U.N. membership.
Smotrich applauded the resolution's defeat. The finance minister has come under fire recently for
defending Israeli soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison—he called the suspects "heroic warriors"—and for asserting that it would be "justified and moral" for Israel to starve 2 million Palestinians to death.
The Israeli activist group Peace Now decried the recent decision by the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) to establish a new Settlement Administration under Smotrich's authority.
"Netanyahu and Smotrich are relentlessly advancing de facto annexation," Peace Now
said Wednesday. "This reckless pursuit will have dire consequences for everyone. The new settlement at Nahal Heletz will create an isolated enclave deep within Palestinian territory, inevitably escalating friction and security challenges."
"This administration is wholly dedicated to advancing the settlement enterprise while completely neglecting the needs of both Israelis and Palestinians," the group added. "This government must be held accountable and replaced—now."
