Encircling Jenin: How Israel’s new settlement push is closing in
An Israeli flag flutters at a new Israeli settlement near Ramallah on 11 April 2026
Alessandra Bajec writes in The New Arab on 27 April, 2026
Earlier in April, Israel’s security cabinet approved the establishment of 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank.
It was the largest single announcement on record, bringing the total number of Israeli settlements okayed by the current administration to 103. UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese called it “the largest ethnic cleansing/land grab in Palestine, since the Nakba”.
The plans include both entirely new settlements and existing outposts that were previously built without Israeli permits and are set to be retroactively legalised.
Six of the planned settlements are south of the Palestinian city of Jenin, in the northern West Bank. According to media reports, two would be established on the sites of Ganim and Kadim – two unauthorised outposts in Jenin’s eastern neighbourhoods – which were dismantled along with two other settlements in the northern district, Homesh and Sa Nur, under Israel’s 2005 disengagement law.
Last Sunday, Israeli authorities reopened the Sa-Nur settlement, one of four former settlements near Jenin. “On this exciting day, we celebrate a historic correction to the criminal expulsion,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated at the ceremony. He said Israeli authorities were also “burying the idea of a Palestinian state”.
The latest settlement push effectively reverses the earlier withdrawal plan, permitting Israelis to return to areas that were previously off-limits. The process to re-legalise the four former settlements in the Jenin area began in March 2023, when Israel’s Knesset passed an amendment to the disengagement law to gradually repeal the ban on Israelis from entering these areas.
In mid-December of 2025, residents of Jenin reported settler groups gathering on the hills of Ganim and Kadim during Jewish holidays, openly calling for a renewed Jewish presence, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet decided to regularise 19 settlements across the West Bank, which included the rebuilding of the two northern outposts.
In the weeks that followed, Jenin and other parts of the northern West Bank were subjected to a broad Israeli military operation aimed at establishing a “new security reality” to enable the reestablishment of the evacuated settlements, including the designation of closed military zones, deployment of additional forces, and setup of military bases to secure the sites.
The authorisation of 34 settlements was reportedly approved in late March but initially kept confidential by the Israeli cabinet, amid suggestions that the move was delayed to avoid provoking a US backlash during ongoing ceasefire negotiations with Iran.
All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law. Outposts, typically established by small groups of settlers without official Israeli authorisation, are considered illegal even under Israeli law, at least initially.
April’s land grab push is part of Israel’s broader plan to annex large swathes of the West Bank after displacing its residents. It aims to achieve this by rendering Palestinian areas targeted for resettlement uninhabitable through the destruction of roads, water, and power systems, and military control to force mass displacement.