Awad Rajoob
16 May 2026•Update: 16 May 2026
Israeli authorities and occupiers are using military infrastructure and seizure orders to expand illegal settlement activity and alter the topography of the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian official report said Saturday.
The report, prepared by the National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said Israeli occupiers, backed by the Israeli army and official Israeli institutions, “have over recent years changed the topographical map of the West Bank.”
According to the report, this activity was done through “the use of military infrastructure and military seizure orders to open new roads and connect settlement outposts to larger settlements.”
The report said the policy includes “modifying the boundaries of military firing zones for settlement purposes, issuing military orders to pave roads serving settlement outposts and converting abandoned military bases into new civilian settlements.”
The Israeli army had, over recent years, destroyed “entire Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley and Masafer Yatta areas, forcing residents to leave while new settlement outposts were established in the same locations,” it noted, adding that some of the outposts were established “in direct coordination with the Israeli political leadership.”
Citing the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the report said the commander of the Israeli army’s Central Command signed eight orders in recent months modifying the boundaries of firing zones in the West Bank “to legalize existing settlement outposts and allow the expansion of other settlements.”
The report stated that "military seizure orders, intended for temporary security purposes, have evolved into a primary instrument supporting the settlement project."
According to data from the bureau, 140 military seizure orders were issued between 2023 and 2025 under the category of “security needs,” with 81% allocated to illegal settlements and settlement outposts.
According to data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, there were 645 illegal Israeli settlements and military sites throughout the West Bank at the end of 2025. These included 151 settlements and 350 settlement outposts, including 89 pastoral outposts, as well as 144 additional sites that included military camps and industrial, tourism, and service areas.
The number of Israeli occupiers in the West Bank reached about 778,500 by the end of 2024, most of them living in the Jerusalem governorate.
*Writing by Mohammad Sio in Istanbul
