![Israeli military vehicles patrol the streets and alleys of the area during the second day of the raid on the Tulkarem Refugee Camp in the West Bank on December 25, 2024 [Issam Rimawi - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/AA-20241225-36582630-36582619-ISRAELI_RAID_ON_TULKAREM_REFUGEE_CAMP_IN_WEST_BANK.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1)
Under the cover of the genocidal war on Gaza, 60 illegal outposts were set up in the occupied West Bank in 2024 alone, an Israeli organisation that monitors Israeli land policy in the occupied Palestinian territory revealed yesterday.
Kerem Navot said 284 outposts have been established since 1997, “more than a fifth” were set up in 2024 alone.
“Unlike in the past, when the Israeli governments still sought to project an image of upholding the rule of law by evacuating a token number of outposts, the current government ordered the army and the Civil Administration to not enforce any evacuations,” it added.
Although the new outposts are illegal, Navot’s CEO Dror Atkes said: “Most of them already have infrastructure, including a connection to Israel’s water pipeline. It’s very simple – they pull pipes from old settlements. As for electricity, some of them have generators and solar panels, but some have already managed to stretch power lines from old settlements.”
Many of the new outposts have few settlers, sometimes fewer than ten. However, they are taking over large areas and establishing infrastructure there, with the aim of allowing more settlers to arrive in the future
it warned.
Others are presented by the settlers as expansions or new neighbourhoods of existing illegal settlements, the establishment of which Israel has unilaterally legalised, in a move not recognised by international law.
Navot warned that “this is how they endlessly expand the area where settlers roam freely and Palestinians do not, gradually creating a settlement contiguous area in a large part of the West Bank.”
According to numerous reports and testimonies from Palestinian residents, activists, journalists, and even settlers, many of the new outposts were established by seizing Palestinian agricultural and grazing lands, violently taking over their land, uprooting their trees, blocking roads they use and erecting fences that block access to their fields.
According to a report by the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs, between October 2023 and November last year, 1,757 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in the occupied West Bank – some by occupation forces, due to construction without an Israeli permit, and others by settlers for the purpose of establishing and expanding outposts.This is the largest expulsion of Palestinians in the West Bank since the Naksa in 1967.
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