The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has led an unprecedented drive to expand Jerusalem’s control of Judea and Samaria, according to a report on Friday citing data and Israeli officials.
Since the coalition of right-wing and religious parties was formed in late 2022, the number of Jewish communities in the region that have official recognition by the Israeli government increased from 128 to 178, according to Israel’s Channel 12 News.
Of the 50 villages that received government approval over the past 30 months, 19 already existed and were retroactively legalized, 14 were neighborhoods of existing communities, 10 have yet to be built and seven are currently farming outposts, according to the report.
Following the June 2023 amendment of a 1996 government resolution that required Israel’s defense minister to sign off on every approval of new residential units, including in the intermediate construction phases, a record-number of 19,389 units were approved in 2025.
All in all, a total of 41,709 new housing units in Judea and Samaria have been promoted by the government since it was established—more than in the previous six years combined, Friday’s Channel 12 report claimed.
Meanwhile, since the start of the war sparked by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror massacre in southern Israel, 66 new outposts were built across Judea and Samaria without receiving Jerusalem’s formal approval, bringing the total number of unrecognized Jewish villages to 214.
Most of the nascent outposts are grazing farms, primarily located in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria, occupying an estimated 787 square kilometers, or almost 200,000 acres, Channel 12 reported.
Alongside strategic roadworks aimed at improving the quality of life of Jewish residents of the area, Israel has ramped up enforcement against illegal Palestinian structures in Area C of Judea and Samaria, where Jerusalem has the exclusive authority to approve construction.
During the past two years, 1,238 illegal Palestinian buildings were torn down by security forces, amounting to a 49% increase in enforcement. Demolition orders were enforced against Palestinians in 91% of the cases, while only 14% of orders against Israelis were carried out.
“There has never been a government that promoted settlement like this one,” Meir Deutsch, director general of the Regavim Movement, which monitors illegal Palestinian construction, told Channel 12 News.
“For the first time since the establishment of the state, Israel is operating in Judea and Samaria as the sovereign,” according to the Israeli activist.
“We want to create contiguity for a Jewish state,” Israeli lawmaker Zvi Sukkot, of the Religious Zionism Party, told the outlet, adding: “We’re working everywhere—the next challenge is sovereignty.”
“We see it as a life mission to determine Judea and Samaria’s future once and for all. The goal is to make it clear to the entire world that a Palestinian state will never be established and that the Jews are here to stay, forever. That’s the agenda—we’re not hiding it,” continued Sukkot.
“If anyone still has doubts that one day a Palestinian state will arise and the Jews can be expelled, with God’s help, and thanks to the steps we’re taking today, it will be clear to everyone that it’s impossible,” he added.
