Israel's cabinet is expected to approve a plan on Thursday (11 June) to allocate around one billion shekels ($338 million) for settlement development in the West Bank, according to reports and anti-settlement campaigners.
The funding would support infrastructure projects, including roads, water connections, sewage systems and temporary housing, at dozens of settlement sites that have already received government approval.
Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said the move would effectively advance the establishment of 61 settlements approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government over the past three years. The organisation said the plan would bypass the standard settlement planning process.
The initiative is being promoted by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right advocate of settlement expansion who has previously said he wants to "bury" the idea of a Palestinian state.
A spokesperson for Smotrich said the cabinet vote would strengthen settlements but argued the sites were "not new settlements" and already existed.
According to the cabinet agenda, ministers are expected to discuss the formalisation of temporary settlement sites in the West Bank. Netanyahu's office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The proposal comes as international scrutiny of Israeli policies in the West Bank intensifies. On Wednesday (10 June), Amnesty International accused Israel of accelerating a campaign of displacement and annexation in the territory.
"Over the past three and a half years Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities," Amnesty Secretary General Agnès Callamard said.
The rights group said settlement expansion, land seizures and settler violence were increasingly forcing Palestinians from their homes. Citing UN data, Amnesty said at least 117 Bedouin and herding communities had experienced full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026.
Around 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Most countries and UN bodies consider the settlements illegal under international law, a position Israel rejects.
Palestinians view settlement expansion as one of the main obstacles to a future independent state, arguing it further fragments territory they seek for a sovereign Palestinian state.
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This is the last of four articles in AnewZ's series examining how conservationists are working to protect and repair damage done to the Aral Sea which lies between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
At least 44 people have died and more than one million have been stranded due to widespread flooding and landslides across southeastern Bangladesh, authorities said on Saturday (11 July).
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This is the third of four articles in AnewZ's series examining how conservationists are working to protect and repair damage done to the Aral Sea which lies between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
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