Al-Haq again expresses its grave concern regarding Israel’s advancing de facto annexation of the West Bank. In March 2026, Israel’s Security Cabinet approved the establishment of 34 new settlements in Area C. Settlement construction is planned around Ramallah, in so-called Area C, and in the northern West Bank in Jenin and Tulkarem, with the trajectory of approved settlements surrounding and potentially fragmenting Jenin from the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). This constitutes Israel’s “largest-ever colonial expansion . . . the largest ethnic cleansing/land grab in Palestine, since the Nakba”, as denounced by United Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

On 19 April 2026, in a ceremony presided over by Israel’s Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance, the settlement of Sa-Nur, in the northern West Bank, was ‘re-established’ by Israel, 21 years after its evacuation. Minister Smotrich stated: “We are abolishing the disgrace of expulsion, killing the idea of ​​the Palestinian state, and returning to the settlement of Sa-Nur”. These developments follow the mass depopulation of Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank, since Israel intensified its military operations in January 2025–– systematically targeting Palestinian refugees, outlawing UNRWA and forcibly displacing 40,000 Palestinians–– in the largest forced displacement witnessed in the West Bank since 1967.

The United Nations Satellite Center (UNOSAT) whose satellite imagery documented the large-scale destruction inflicted by the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) in Jenin, recorded damage to 676 structures in Jenin refugee camp, including 201 completely destroyed structures, resulting in damage to 52 percent of the camp’s total structures. Destruction of this magnitude reveals Israel’s intent to forcibly appropriate large swaths of the OPT and to permanently expel Palestinians from their homes and lands, including by corralling them into even smaller and more populated enclaves in Area A.

Israel’s Annexationist Policies and Practices

In September 2025, Minister Smotrich called for the annexation of 82 percent of the West Bank. On 19 April 2026, he called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to annex Gaza –– “Instead of handing over territory to the enemy,” Israel must “take territory from the enemy. Israel’s annexationist intent is evidenced in Israel’s Security Cabinet’s “decision to provide for the establishment of water and electricity infrastructures for the new settlements [including the reopened Sa-nur settlement] even before their approval by the Civil Administration”. Following a meeting between Israel’s Minister of Energy, Eli Cohen and head of the so-called Samaria District Council, Yossi Dagan; Minister Cohen announced that they were: “Exercising sovereignty in practice! I reached an agreement . . . on connecting new settlements in Samaria to electricity and water infrastructure, including Chomesh, Sa-Nur, Rechavam, and Ebal.”

Minister Cohen and Dagan stated that the decision was part of the “Million in Samaria” plan promoted by the so-called Samaria Regional Council in 2022, aimed at transferring one million Israelis settlers to live in settlements in Tulkarem, Jenin and Nablus in the West Bank. Dagan outlined the settlement objectives, explaining that “Based on this plan, we will fill the area together with roads, electricity, water and sewage [infrastructure], in order to bring the masses here — millions of citizens of the State of Israel to the heart of the land, to Samaria [West Bank]”. The plan follows the legislative encouragement of Jewish settlement as a “national value” in Article 7 of Israel’s 2018 Nation-State Law.

In December 2025, the Knesset approved a budget of NIS 2.75 billion (932,533,800.00 USD) for settlement construction in the West Bank over the next five years. This latest settlement expansion is a product of Israel’s intensified policy of unlawful demographic engineering in the OPT. More than 70 percent of the lands in Area C are off limits for Palestinian use and development, confiscated by Israel as state lands, nature reserves, and military training areas. Israel’s practice of designating Palestinian land as state land is based on a manipulative application of Ottoman law, breaching the prohibitions on alienating public and private immoveable property enshrined in Articles 46 and 55 of the Hague Regulations, and jus cogens norms of international law, prohibiting the acquisition of territory through use of force.

Israel’s Higher Planning Council has radically accelerated and normalized construction in the OPT, advancing approximately 28,000 units since the beginning of 2025 and at least 41 new settlements approved by Israel’s so-called Security Cabinet in 2025. Following the 34 additional settlements approved in March, Minister Smotrich stated on 22 April 2026: “Today, here in Samaria, the prophecies of comfort are no longer a dream—they're the view from the window. Since the previous Independence Day, we've approved 75 new settlements, and the revolution doesn't stop! Happy Independence Day!”

Settler outposts have also proliferated across the West Bank, with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reporting between 1 November 2024 and 31 December 2025, 84 outposts were established across the OPT, bringing the total number to more than 300. Although colonial outposts established by settlers are unsanctioned under Israel’s domestic law, the Israeli occupying authorities fund their construction and development; allotting land; issuing permits and providing infrastructure and services, including water and electricity networks, at low costs; and retroactively “legalising” them.

During the same period, 36,000 Palestinians in the West Bank were forcibly displaced “on a scale previously unseen”, due to Israel’s discriminatory and systematic policies and practices, including settlement expansion, home demolitions, and settler violence.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory was unlawful, breaching peremptory norms of international law, including the prohibition against acquisition of territory by force, the rights of peoples to self-determination, and the prohibition against racial discrimination and apartheid. Israel, even as an unlawful Occupying Power, remains bound by occupation law. Accordingly, an Occupying Power does not have any sovereign rights over the territory. International humanitarian law (IHL) further prohibits forced transfers of the local population as well as transfer by the Occupying Power of its own civilian population into the occupied territory. Such acts constitute war crimes, grave breaches of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, and crimes against humanity. Such acts when carried out with an intent to destroy the Palestinian group, may amount to genocide.

Accordingly, Israel had and still has to cease all new settlement activities and evacuate all settlers as rapidly as possible. One and a half years on, rather than implementing this ruling, Israel has further entrenched its occupation and annexation of the OPT, expanding its illegal settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Disregarding the above prohibitions, Israel is effectively engineered a Jewish majority demography in the OPT by stripping the West Bank of its Palestinian indigenous population and replacing it with illegally transferred in Israeli settlers.

Third states must radically adapt their behaviour so as to enforce their obligations under international law. Piecemeal steps including sanctioning individual settlers and settler organisations without recognizing and addressing the responsibility of the State of Israel is inadequate, and distorts the reality and the seriousness of the situation. Settler violence finds its origin in the settlement enterprise and settlers are trained and equipped by the State of Israel, which shields Israelis from accountability for acts of violence against the Palestinian people. Meaningful measures from Third States require addressing Israel’s accountability, and the root causes of the occupation and denial of Palestinian self-determination and return, namely dismantling Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime and unlawful occupation of the Palestinian territory. This includes measures aimed at compelling Israel to dismantle its settlements.

• Enact legislation prohibiting the trade of all goods and services with Israeli settlements, and to sanction companies within their jurisdiction that have failed to divest from or cease to cooperate with Israel’s settlement enterprise;

• As Israel’s larger commercial partner, the European Union must act jointly to cancel immediately the EU-Israel Association Agreement;

• Adopt an embargo on arms bound to Israel, bar arms transfers to Israel transiting through their territory and use their universal jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of the above breach who cross their territory, including airspace;

• Adopt motions and resolutions recognising the illegality of the situation created by Israel’s breach of peremptory norms of international law, including its apartheid policies and practices on both sides of the Green Line;

• States must further act to sanction individual settlers and settler organisations, taking action, including legislative action to penalise settler organizations, businesses, and sporting associations which contribute to the maintenance of Israel’s unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), commencing with State or public officials, unlawfully present in the OPT;

• Revoke the status of settler charities and related illegal entities;

• For companies to perform enhanced due diligence duties and withdraw from activities in the OPT which involve gross human rights violations and unlawfully contribute to the maintenance of the unlawful occupation.