ISRAELI authorities are ramping up use of an obscure legal mechanism to create illegal settlements in an apparent attempt to make it harder for Palestinians to return to their land, researchers have warned.
Since October 2023, the Israeli government has issued 114 military orders establishing, expanding, or dividing settlement jurisdiction areas – roughly the same number issued during the previous 22 years combined, according to Bimkom.
The Israeli human rights group said that these orders have added around 6200 acres which will lay the groundwork for 53 settlements, of which 39 would be new, 14 through separation from existing settlements and 11 expansions.
Bimkom researchers said that the settlement jurisdiction areas established in 2026 had, for the first time, been designated on land previously inhabited by Palestinian communities who had recently been displaced.
Among the cases highlighted are Ein Samia and Mu'arrajat Centre, whose populations were forced out by Israeli settlers.
The use of the increasingly popular legal mechanism highlighted in the research creates “substantial” planning and legal barriers preventing Palestinians from returning to their land, Bimkom said.
In a statement, the group said: “The findings suggest a shift beyond the expansion of existing settlements.
"In these cases, jurisdiction orders are being used to formalise Israeli control over areas from which Palestinian communities have already been displaced, making their return increasingly difficult.”
The process by which Israeli settlers illegally take land from Palestinians is accompanied by widespread violence, which is effectively tolerated by the Israeli government.
Israeli settlers and state forces have killed more Palestinian children in the West Bank in the past three years than in the 17 before that, research by Oxfam found earlier this month.
The study found that 1036 Palestinians – including 225 children – had been killed by Israeli forces or settlers between 2006 and the end of 2022.
However, in the last three years, from 2023 to the end of 2025, 1244 Palestinians – including 268 children – have been killed.
According to figures published by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din in January 2020, 91% of files relating to settler violence against Palestinians were closed without an indictment.
A report by Amnesty International published at the start of the month found that the expansion of settlements – which are deemed illegal under international law – was led and sponsored by the Israeli state.
This contradicted the prevailing view that settlements were the work of “rogue actors or what the international community has repeatedly labelled as extremist settlers, organisations or one or two ministers”.
Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said: “What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world.”
More broadly, Israel has been accused by a raft of organisations, including UN investigators, of committing genocide in Gaza.
The most recent of these was a report from the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry published earlier this week which found that the state had committed genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity across Palestine.
It noted that the Israeli government deliberately targeted children “to weaken demographic vitality and deny the Palestinian people's right to self-determination”.
