Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday toured the West Bank, where they reaffirmed their commitment to Jewish settlements and cracking down on illegal Palestinian construction, according to a statement from Katz’s office.
“We will not abandon the security of settlers or allow [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to use illegal construction as a tool to create a strategic threat against the settlements,” Katz said in the statement.
Accompanied by senior officials from the Israel Defense Forces, the Civil Administration and the Defense Ministry, Katz and Smotrich visited newly recognized communities like Kerem Reim and Sde Ephraim, according to the statement.
“The West Bank is the heart of Israel, and we will protect it with every means necessary,” Katz declared.
“Since 1967, there has not been such a transformation in the West Bank,” Smotrich said, adding that “the government has recognized 28 new communities and is enforcing regulations in areas that were previously ignored.”
He also boasted that over the past year, “a record was broken for illegal Arab construction demolitions” in the West Bank.
“With that, we recognize that to win this campaign requires using additional strategic tools that will bring about the desired turnaround,” he continued, without elaborating.
Israeli army units demolish two structures in the village of Al-Walaja, Bethlehem District, that were constructed without a building permit. December 9, 2024. (Wisam Hashlamoun FLASH90)
“Settlers are not second-class citizens,” Smotrich affirmed. “They deserve the same security as all Israelis. Judea and Samaria are our ancestral homeland, and we are here to stay,” he said, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names.
Last month, the security cabinet approved a decision to split off 13 so-called “neighborhoods” of existing West Bank settlements from their “mother settlements,” thereby turning them into 13 independent settlements. At the time, Smotrich described the move as an important step on the path of “de facto [Israeli] sovereignty” over the West Bank.
The same month the left-wing Peace Now organization reported that a record number of illegal settlement outposts were established in 2024, and the year saw an all-time high for land appropriation.
According to a March report from the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, during the period from November 1, 2023, to October 31, 2024, a total of 1,779 Palestinian structures were demolished in the West Bank, without specifying what type of structures. The figure, it said, was nearly 200 percent higher than during the previous reporting period.
The demolitions were carried out due to “lack of building permits,” it said, and noted that such permits “are almost impossible to obtain for Palestinians.”
Agencies contributed to this report.
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