Israeli Construction and Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf came out over the weekend in support of a plan to bring a million Jewish residents to Samaria.
Goldknopf—the head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party—during a visit to Samaria called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to use the momentum provided by the entry into office of the Trump administration to accelerate the construction of more real estate projects in the Jewish state’s biblical heartland, the Channel 14 News broadcaster reported on Sunday.
Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan, who accompanied the politician on the tour, said, “We will bring a million residents here.”
“We will build cities here; we will build communities,” said Dagan.
“And the people of Israel—thanks to this, thanks to the prayers, thanks to the war being waged by the security forces, and in particular thanks to the building of the Land [of Israel]—will win,” he said.
In 2023, Dagan unveiled a plan to increase the number of Jews living in Samaria from barely 50,000 to over one million, saying the initiative would “strengthen Zionism” and solve the country’s housing crisis.
The “Samaria to a Million” proposal, which was first shared on Aug. 23, 2023, in a letter to Netanyahu, had been in the making for more than a year with the backing of “hundreds” of local leaders, Dagan said.
The initiative suggests building new cities and expanding existing communities, while better connecting the region to central and northern Israel via trains and highways. The plan also proposes the construction of a new hospital in Samaria, as well as industrial zones.
Jerusalem has advanced plans to build more than 2,300 housing units in Judea and Samaria since Dec. 1, 2024, as part of a push by the Settlement Administration, a unit in the Defense Ministry under the authority of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Ynet reported Monday.
The Settlement Administration has reportedly convened every week since early December to approve construction in the region, approving a total of 2,377 units, whereas the body would previously meet once every three to four months on average.
With the weekly meetings, Israel is expected to approve a record number of new units throughout Judea and Samaria in 2025. Last year, the Civil Administration approved the construction of 12,349 housing units, compared to 9,884 in 2023, according to figures obtained by Ynet.