Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich boasted on Tuesday about accelerating settlement construction on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, saying his government had established 160 settlement farms and approved more than 100 new settlements.
He said in a post on the American company “X” platform: “During my term, I led one of the biggest changes in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank according to the Jewish designation) since the establishment of the state in 1948.”
The international community considers Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian territory to be illegal under international law and affirms that they are an obstacle to a two-state solution.
Smotrich added that the government “approved more than 100 new settlements, established 160 settlement farms, and brought the northern West Bank back onto the settlement map.”
He continued: “The government has invested billions of shekels in infrastructure , and has greatly strengthened Israeli control over the area.”
Referring to the possibility of a new government being formed under the leadership of former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, he said: “An Eisenkot government will destroy all of this, and we must not allow that to happen.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government boasts that it has significantly escalated settlement activity since taking office at the end of 2022.
In December 2025, Smotrich allocated approximately $843 million to promote settlement activity in the West Bank over a five-year period, in what the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth described as a form of “de facto annexation.”
He also repeatedly vowed to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and demanded that Israel annex about 82 percent of the West Bank.
The Israeli left-wing Peace Now movement estimates that there are about half a million settlers in the West Bank, in addition to 250,000 settlers in settlements established in East Jerusalem.
Palestinians believe that these projects are part of an accelerated Israeli policy to expand settlements, confiscate land, and impose new realities on the ground.
In 1948, Israel was established on lands occupied by armed Zionist gangs who committed massacres and displaced at least 750,000 Palestinians. Then Tel Aviv occupied the rest of the Palestinian territories in 1967 and refuses to withdraw from them.
