GROWING ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS EXPANSION – A CONSTANT THREAT TO PALESTINIAN LIFE

1. In January 2026, the Israeli government announced plans to advance the E1 settlement project, which includes over 3,400 housing units. If implemented, this project would divide the West Bank into two sides, destroy Palestinian territorial continuity, and further entrench the occupation. In parallel, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan advanced by far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich to establish 19 new settlements on Palestinian land. This decision represents a dangerous escalation of Israel’s settlement enterprise and reflects the growing institutionalisation of annexationist and supremacist policies within the Israeli government. These actions are not isolated developments but part of a systematic and deliberate policy to entrench the occupation, dispossess Palestinians, and impose irreversible facts on the ground.
2. Alongside formal settlement expansion, organised Israeli settler groups continue to carry out terror attacks against Palestinian towns and villages, including arson attacks on homes, agricultural land, and vehicles, physical assaults, and forced displacement. These acts are carried out with the direct protection or acquiescence of the Israeli army and authorities, demonstrating the structural link between settler violence and state policy. Such practices echo historic patterns of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement and persist due to the continued failure of the international community to impose meaningful accountability measures or sanctions. The expansion of settlements and the escalation of settler terrorism represent a grave threat to the Palestinian people’s fundamental rights, undermining any possibility of achieving a just and lasting peace and deliberately obstructing the realisation of a Palestinian state based on the two-state solution.

IUSY Calls All member organisations to:

3. Clearly and unequivocally condemn Israel’s settlement expansion, annexation policies, and settler terrorism as grave violations of international law and fundamental human rights.
4. Demand an immediate and comprehensive halt to all settlement construction, expansion, and legalisation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and call for the dismantling of all illegal Israeli settlements, as an essential condition for restoring Palestinian territorial continuity and enabling the realisation of an independent Palestinian state within the framework of the two-state solution.
5. Strengthen political, public, and grassroots solidarity with the Palestinian people to ensure their rights, freedom, and territorial integrity are respected and protected.