Israeli Settlements and Outposts in the Occupied West Bank: Historical Notes, and Observations in the Light of Recent Events
According to various media reports, Israeli settlers and Palestinians clashed on 24 July 2026 in the northern West Bank village of Tal, near the settlement of Havat Gilad and southwest of the city of Nablus. Four Palestinians, an Israeli settler, and an active-duty Israeli soldier lost their lives in Tal. In retaliation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a “wide-scale military operation” and deployed five battalions to target “terrorist hotbeds”, while armed settler militias targeted a number of West Bank villages and towns, attacking two mosques in the process. This is the latest in a series of violent encounters between Israeli settlers and Palestinians, to which there seems no end in sight.
Following the Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours in June 1967, Israel acquired the West Bank, on the western bank of the River Jordan, from the Kingdom of Jordan, along with the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Israel subsequently withdrew from Sinai in 1982, and from Gaza in 2005. East Jerusalem was annexed under a ‘Proclamation on the Enlargement of the Municipality of Jerusalem’ on 28 June 1967, to be followed by the Golan Heights in December 1981. This has left the West Bank-the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria-as an occupied territory of Israel, but not formally annexed. Israel’s pre-1967 boundary with the West Bank was marked by the Green Line, a demarcation line set up by the four General Armistice Agreements in 1949 between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria-in that order. The Green Line would form the eastern boundary of Israel in a two-state solution, whereupon the land to the east, up to the Jordan River, would constitute the State of Palestine.
Immediately after the 1967 annexation, Israel began setting up Jewish neighbourhoods within East Jerusalem, a process which was formalised under the Bolt (Bariah) Neighbourhoods Programme. Within the Occupied West Bank, hilltop settlements, military bases, and a multidimensional road system came to symbolise the Israeli occupation. On 13 July 1967, General Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, formulated the Allon Plan for the annexation of a strip of land, between six to nine miles wide, along the entire western bank of the Jordan River in which to establish Jewish settlements, thereby creating a buffer zone between Israel and Jordan. There was to be no attempt at the integration of West Bank Palestinians and Israeli settlers. The Allon Plan, although not officially adopted, formed the basis for the Labour government’s settlement policy, under which 32 settlements, mostly agricultural communities of secular Zionist Jews, were established along the Jordan Valley and around Jerusalem. The very first post-war settlement of Kfar Etzion was established at the site of Gush Etzion, a Jewish settlement in the Judean Hills which was destroyed by the Arab Legion in 1948.
Religious Zionist Jews under Rabbi Moshe Levinger established a settlement at Kiryat Arba, outside the old city of Hebron, in 1970. Gush Emunim, founded in 1974 by followers of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook and headed by Levinger, promoted Jewish settlement in the West Bank as an integral part of their messianic vision of a ‘Greater Israel’-referred to in Hebrew as Eretz Yisrael ha-Shlema, or the complete Land of Israel. Under the Sharon Plan, articulated by General Ariel Sharon, Minister of Agriculture, in 1977, Jewish settlements were concentrated along a strip adjacent to the Green Line. The Drobles Plan, envisaged by Matityahu Drobles, head of the Settlement Division of the World Zionist Organisation, took matters further and encouraged settlement throughout the West Bank. Religious Zionists began to arrive in greater numbers under the Likud government of 1977-1984. The pace of settlement slowed after 1984, and new settlements were ended under Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister from 1992 to 1995, although existing settlements were allowed to expand.
Rabin sought compromise with the Palestinians. The Palestinian-Israeli Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, commonly known as the Oslo II Accord, was accordingly signed on 28 September 1995. Under the Accord, the Palestinian Authority was created as an autonomous body in West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli-occupied West Bank was divided into three administrative areas: A (full Palestinian control), B (joint Israeli-Palestinian control), and C (full Israeli control). The Oslo Accords were opposed by Israelis who saw any withdrawal from the West Bank as a threat to Jewish lives and a surrender to Israel’s enemies, leading to Rabin’s untimely assassination on 4 November 1995.
The construction of a ‘Separation Barrier’, comprising high cement blocks, reinforced by electric fences, trenches, gun emplacements, and security patrols, was begun in 2002 to separate Israel and the West Bank, in response to an increase in acts of violence from the West Bank. A “seam zone”, to which access is restricted, has been created between the barrier and the Green Line, while some Palestinian towns have been encircled by walls.
The West Bank remains in a state of suspended animation, under temporary military occupation by Israel. Internal security is tight, enforced by permits, military checkpoints, roadblocks, house searches, and the like. Free movement is further restricted by earth mounds, iron gates, and concrete barriers. There are more than 280 legal Israeli settlements, home to more than 700,000 settlers, in a region that is also home to 3.3 million Palestinians. Legal settlements, as recognised by the Israeli Ministry of the Interior, must be set up on state-owned land, backed up by building permits from the government. Outposts are set up on privately-owned land, often as collections of tents or mobile homes, and are illegal under Israeli law, but are increasingly being recognised retroactively by the government. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, with few exceptions, cannot become citizens or permanent residents of Israel and are restricted in their options for travel.
The future of the Occupied West Bank has become the subject of conflicting and mutually- exclusive narratives. Under the dominant Israeli narrative, vigorously promoted by religious-settler ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in the Netanyahu cabinet, the restoration of Eretz Yisrael, encompassing modern-day Israel and Palestine and maybe more, is a religious imperative for the Jewish nation, and no compromise is possible when it prevents Jews from returning to their ancestral homeland in the Promised Land. Increasing Jewish settlement in the West Bank will alter the demographic balance in favour of Jews and disrupt the geographical contiguity of existing Palestinian communities, protecting Israel from future terrorist attacks and ensuring that a Palestinian state is no longer be a viable option.
Palestinians and their sympathisers refer to territorial encroachment and the acquisition of land by Israel in the West Bank, coupled with collective punishment for, and “ethnic cleansing” of, Palestinians in regions where they currently form a majority. The Israeli government is said to have “unlawfully” acquired land for purposes of the state and for nature reserves, national parks, and firing ranges. Settlers are accused of demolishing Palestinian homes and forcibly expropriating their farmland and pastures. Settler violence and “terrorism” has been condemned even by some Israelis.
A coordinated international response to the situation in the West Bank has been provided by the United Nations (UN). The UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 242 on 22 November 1967, calling for Israeli withdrawal from territories it had occupied that year. Security Council Resolutions 446 of 22 March 1979 and 465 of 1 March 1980 deemed Israeli settlement policy in the Occupied Territories legally invalid. UN Security Council Resolution, adopted on 23 December 2016, was concerned with the “cessation of Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” More recently, a Summary of the Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on ‘Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem’ was released. To directly quote the document: “the Court considers that the transfer by Israel of settlers to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as Israel’s maintenance of their presence, is contrary to the sixth paragraph of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” It must be said that the State of Israel has consistently rejected these UN Security Council Resolutions and does not accept the jurisdiction of the ICJ in this matter.
Given the mutually irreconcilable positions of the State of Israel and the Palestinian community in the Southern Levant, any meaningful progress will not be possible without a radical change in the mindsets of the parties concerned, in favour of compromise. Elections to the Palestinian Authority, last held in January 2006, are long overdue. The outcome of the forthcoming Israeli election in October 2026 is also eagerly awaited. In a post-truth world, the reality is that, apart from those directly affected by the events on the ground, observers from afar cannot reasonably be expected to receive a true picture of what is really going on in the Occupied West Bank.
Ashis Banerjee