Uprooting memories: how settlement expansion displaces Palestinians in the West Bank
This year, the West Bank has witnessed the largest settlement expansion in decades, forcing Palestinian families to leave their homes.
Amid an unprecedented expansion reshaping the map of the West Bank, Palestinians find themselves uprooted from land they have lived on for decades.
Mohammad Abdel Rahman, 58, is one of them. For twenty years, he lived with his wife and his beehives on the slope of a remote hill in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
In May, however, Israeli settlers set up an outpost about 200 meters from his home and took control of the road leading to it, preventing him from returning, he said. Israeli soldiers later removed him and his wife, Suha Abdel Rahman, according to their account.
The settlers established an outpost near his home, raised the Israeli flag, and seized the access route.
Abdel Rahman told the New York Times: “All my memories are in that house. They are not only stealing our land, but also trying to cut the roots that tie us to it.”
In the largest expansion in decades, the government approved the conversion of 22 villages and neighborhoods into settlements spread across the West Bank, including the Beit Horon North settlement near his home west of Ramallah.
Abdel Rahman and his wife were among the first affected by the government’s plan to redraw the West Bank by transforming more Palestinian areas into settlements.
Behind the settlement policy
According to the newspaper, this forms part of a long-standing strategy aimed at entrenching Israeli control over the occupied Palestinian territories. The process has accelerated since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in 2022, and even more so after the Gaza war triggered by the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023.
The West Bank has also seen a spike in settler violence — which Israeli police say they have been unable to contain — as well as large-scale military operations said to target militants but which have displaced entire Palestinian neighborhoods.
Researchers and historians say this has resulted in the largest displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank in half a century.
A Palestinian state and settlement expansion
Most of the international community maintains that establishing a Palestinian state including the West Bank is essential to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Israel has expanded its presence there since 1967 through settlements, even in densely populated Palestinian areas.
Israel Gantz, one of the settlement council leaders who championed the plan, said the government aimed to accelerate expansion through its May decision.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority seeks to strengthen its presence on the ground before Israel consolidates further control.
Gantz stated: “Suppose there are 500 acres of land the state does not want to lose; it establishes a village there. It doesn’t need to become a city, but simply being there prevents anyone else from being there.”
The United Nations and the International Court of Justice consider all settlements in the occupied West Bank illegal, a position Israel rejects.
Project E1
Last August, the Israeli government approved a major settlement project known as E1, which would effectively split the West Bank in two, making it harder for Palestinians to establish a contiguous state.
In recent months, several government officials have repeatedly threatened to annex parts of the West Bank.
Over the past year, settlers have constructed a record number of outposts, according to an Israeli military official quoted anonymously.
Hagit Ofran from Peace Now said that more than 40 outposts have been built in the last six months alone.
Gantz explained that the government’s plan to establish 22 settlements aims to “limit Palestinian urban expansion and connect populated areas to Israelis”, adding: “Beit Horon North, for example, will prevent Ramallah from expanding.”
Under the Oslo Accords, both sides agreed not to alter the status of the West Bank. But successive Israeli governments have ignored unauthorized outposts while the military has provided them with implicit protection, paving the way for large-scale expansion.
Some remote areas, such as the one where Abdel Rahman lived, were not part of this expansion until this year.
Abdel Rahman said: “We thought no one would pay attention to our small patch of land.” He says he is ready to fight for his home and has filed complaints with Israeli police and the Civil Administration.
