Israel is preparing for parliamentary elections scheduled in October, during which the settler movement has significantly accelerated its efforts to expand control over the occupied West Bank. The United Nations recently warned that incidents involving Israeli settlers—frequently in coordination with Israeli military forces—alongside the establishment of unauthorized settlements and outposts have reached unprecedented levels.
This expansion reflects political pressures within Israel’s right-wing coalition, particularly from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and his Religious Zionist Party, which has made West Bank settlement expansion a central policy objective. According to statements made by Defence Minister Israel Katz in late July, the current governing coalition has approved the establishment of 104 illegal settlements and approximately 160 settlement farms in the West Bank since taking power in 2022. Smotrich, who made increased administrative control over the West Bank a condition of supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, has implemented institutional reforms designed to entrench settlement authority, including establishing and legally embedding a Settlements Administration agency within the Ministry of Defence in 2023.
Despite these efforts, opinion polling suggests Smotrich’s party faces uncertainty in meeting the electoral threshold needed for Knesset representation. Political analysts characterize this situation as creating pressure to consolidate support among the settler constituency while the party’s electoral prospects remain contested.
The acceleration of settlement activity has coincided with escalating violence in the West Bank. In July alone, Palestinian authorities documented 2,256 attacks against Palestinians and their property, with 1,458 attributed to the Israeli army and 798 to settlers. Human rights organizations attribute the intensification partly to political messaging and military policies that, they argue, effectively encourage such violence.
Observers note that Netanyahu may prioritize retaining support from the settler movement and hard-right political factions over addressing the violence, given his multiple political challenges including an ongoing corruption trial and an independent inquiry into events preceding the 2023 Hamas-led attack. This alignment of political necessity with settler activism has created what analysts describe as limited room for Netanyahu to criticize settlement expansion or settler violence.
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