29/12/2025 – Union for Justice Foundation
As 2025 draws to a close, the West Bank appears to have been subjected to a gradual and multifaceted Israeli escalation combining military incursions, settlement expansion, home demolitions, and forced displacement, in a clear attempt to impose a new demographic reality. Like other Palestinian cities, particularly in the occupied West Bank, Jenin Governorate is facing the “onslaught” of Israeli settlement policies that target it through settlements and the apartheid separation wall, due to its strategic importance.
During the current month, the Israeli Security Cabinet approved the establishment of 19 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, a step that violates international laws and norms. Israeli Finance Minister and Minister for Settlements within the Ministry of Defense, Bezalel Smotrich, described the decision as “historic” and aimed at preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Located in the far north of the West Bank, Jenin Governorate faces numerous settlement and security schemes and has recently become a focal point of Israeli occupation policies, amid attempts to impose a military and security siege, entrench settlement dominance, and forcibly displace the rightful landowners. This is being pursued through plans to establish four new settlements within the governorate.
Currently, Jenin Governorate contains six settlements, five settlement outposts, two Israeli army camps, and five permanent military checkpoints, in addition to the apartheid separation wall that surrounds most of its lands. This has created a complex geographical reality that has fragmented Palestinian neighborhoods and villages, turning them into isolated enclaves that are easily controlled.
In addition to the repercussions of the division imposed by the Oslo Accords on the West Bank into Areas “A,” “B,” and “C,” the occupation has exploited the agreement by placing 33.4% of the lands belonging to Jenin Governorate under its security control through their classification as Area “C.”
In recent times, the lands of Jenin Governorate—like other areas of the West Bank and Jerusalem—have been subjected to an aggressive colonial settlement campaign. The occupation has confiscated tens of thousands of dunams, severing the territorial continuity of Palestinian areas. Settlements in Jenin Governorate have been distributed in the form of belts surrounding the city and its villages, with the aim of suffocating their potential for expansion and facilitating control over land and population.
In this context, Israeli occupation machinery has begun leveling vast agricultural lands in the village of Raba, southeast of Jenin Governorate, in preparation for the construction of a 12-kilometer military road. The road is planned to extend from north of Khirbet Ibziq in Tubas Governorate to the Jabal al-Salma area within the lands of Raba village, where the occupation intends to establish a new settlement outpost. Following extensive investigation by the Union for Justice, it was revealed that the route of the new road is not limited to the lands previously notified for seizure, but extends to include vast agricultural areas east of the apartheid separation wall. This will deprive residents of access to more than 2,300 dunams of their agricultural lands.
At the same time, Israeli occupation forces have reinforced their presence in the four settlements evacuated in Jenin Governorate in 2005 under the Disengagement Plan, following the Cabinet’s decision to re-establish these evacuated settlements: Kadim, Ganim, Sanur, and Jannet.
Israeli forces deployed military bulldozers and other equipment to the sites of the Sanur and Jannet settlements in preparation for rebuilding them, while maintaining an intensified and continuous military presence in Kadim and Ganim, east of Jenin city. These areas were recently stormed by groups of settlers who celebrated the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, in a provocative message directed at Palestinian residents and communities adjacent to the settlements.
On the same day, Israeli buses carrying dozens of settlers, escorted by occupation soldiers and military vehicles, stormed the site of the evacuated “Tirsala” area, known as the Sanur settlement, to mark the Hanukkah holiday.
From a legal perspective, the legal team of the Union for Justice affirms the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including those in Jenin, and their lack of any legal legitimacy, as they constitute a blatant violation of numerous international agreements and resolutions.
Settlements violate Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Accordingly, Israel’s transfer of part of its civilian population into the occupied Palestinian territory through the establishment of settlements, the provision of economic incentives, and military protection constitutes a clear violation of this provision.
The establishment of settlements also represents a direct violation of the principle of the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force,” one of the fundamental principles of international law enshrined in the United Nations Charter and affirmed by UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Settlement activities aim to alter the legal and demographic status of the occupied Palestinian territories.
Furthermore, settlement construction contravenes the 2004 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, which affirmed that Israeli settlements established in the occupied Palestinian territory are illegal and that Israel must cease all settlement activities.
The legal team concludes that Israeli settlements, including those planned in Jenin, constitute a grave violation of international law, produce no legitimate legal consequences, and impose a legal obligation on the international community and all human rights institutions not to recognize them, and to take urgent international action to halt all settlement activities and hold accountable all those who support their establishment.
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