{"id":46748,"date":"2026-04-10T14:20:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=46748"},"modified":"2026-04-10T14:20:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T14:20:05","slug":"israel-approves-34-new-west-bank-settlements-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=46748","title":{"rendered":"Israel approves 34 new West Bank settlements: report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2026\/04\/101849387f79248.webp\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Israel has approved the establishment of 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to Israeli media reports and the watchdog <em>Peace Now<\/em>, which said the decision was taken \u201csecretly\u201d in early April.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe security cabinet secretly decided to establish 34 new settlements,\u201d <em>Peace Now<\/em> said in a statement released late on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The 34 settlements come on top of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1983226\">68 others already approved<\/a> since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s right-wing government came to power in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>The decision has not been officially published by any government body, and the defence ministry, in charge of settlements in the occupied West Bank, declined to respond to <em>AFP<\/em>\u2019s questions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are not addressing this issue,\u201d a spokesperson for the ministry told <em>AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>According to news channel <em>i24News<\/em>, 10 of the 34 settlements are already existing outposts, which are illegal under Israeli law, but will now be retroactively legalised under the decision.<\/p>\n<p>The remaining 24 are yet to be built. All settlements are illegal under international law.<\/p>\n<p>News website <em>Ynet<\/em> reported that military chief Eyal Zamir warned during the security cabinet meeting that took place on April 1 that the army could \u201ccollapse\u201d because of increasing demands on its manpower.<\/p>\n<p>That included the legalisation of dozens of outposts, granting them official settlement status and therefore protection from Israeli troops.<\/p>\n<p>Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.<\/p>\n<p>Excluding east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis now live there in settlements, among some three million Palestinians.<\/p>\n<p>Settlement expansion has been a policy under successive Israeli governments since 1967, but has accelerated significantly under the current Netanyahu-led coalition, widely regarded as one of the most right-wing in Israel\u2019s history.<\/p>\n<p>Rights groups say approvals of new settlements, land seizures and settler violence have further increased since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.<\/p>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1990525\/israel-approves-34-new-west-bank-settlements-report\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Israel has approved the establishment of 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to Israeli media reports and the watchdog Peace Now, which said&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertaonment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}