Description

צפון הגדה [Northern West Bank]
Undoing History
As the World Watched Gaza, Settlers Charged Ahead in the West Bank. A Clash Is Imminent

By Yarden Michaeli, Matan Golan and Yaniv Kubovich for Haaretz
Top video: Roy Haddy, @limor_sonhar. Under 27A

June 23, 2026

A revolution is taking place in the northern West Bank. A decades-long settler project is becoming a reality – fast. Settler representatives in the Israeli government are reaping political gains, while the IDF enables and supports the effort on the ground. The revolution started unfolding after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government was sworn in in 2022. It was accelerated after Hamas' October 7 attack.

At the heart of the drama is an effort to reestablish settlements evacuated under Israel's 2005 disengagement plan, deep inside Palestinian-populated areas, where Israelis had largely been absent for nearly two decades. In total, settlers are taking over 18 strategic sites that cut through the largest contiguous Palestinian population area in the West Bank.

Israel's return to the area includes the deployment of military forces, the construction of bases to protect settlements, road building, land expropriations and the intimidation of Palestinians in their daily lives. Senior military officials understand the move could ignite the region. Settler leaders, however, celebrate it: "This is what redemption looks like."

Settlers have also established several outposts in the area. Across the West Bank, outposts are on the forefront of an effort to push Palestinians off their land and dismantle the Oslo Accords. In the northern West Bank specifically, Shuva Israel Farm is an offshoot of the settlement Homesh. Its establishment last year became possible only after the repeal of the Disengagement Law.

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Satellite imagery from May shows at least seven structures at Shuva Israel and what appears to be infrastructure for 10 more. In March, two settlers from the outpost entered farmland near the village of Beit Imrin on an ATV. It was in Area A, where Israelis are prohibited from entering under the Oslo Accords. There, a Palestinian driver collided with them. One settler was killed and the other injured. The Shin Bet and police said it was a terrorist attack and that the Palestinian driver would be charged. Netanyahu offered condolences to the dead settler's family, saying: "His memory will be preserved in the heart of the nation for generations."

After the incident, settlers launched what they called revenge attacks, calling to "erase" the village and attacking more than 20 locations across the West Bank. They assaulted Palestinians, torched homes and cars, vandalized property and spray-painted revenge slogans. "They smashed someone's head open and tried to burn down his house while his family was inside," a resident of Silat ad-Dhahr told Haaretz. "Since then, people have started building walls. We live in fear. Where will our children be when the next attack comes?" Security cameras captured dozens of settlers rampaging through Jalud, south of Nablus.

As of today, there are at least nine outposts in the northern West Bank. Except Shuva Israel, all are located on the area's outskirts. But it is not only outposts that are adding tensions to the area. The return of settlements and the army has increasingly worsened Palestinian daily life, including restricted access to lands, roadblocks, military raids, tree uprooting and more. Settlers from Sa-Nur forced residents of the nearby village of Asasa to exhume an elderly man and relocate his grave shortly after his burial. "We were shocked. What kind of neighbors are these?" a family member told Haaretz.

The return of settlers is also bringing Israeli vehicles back to major roads through Palestinian population centers. Settlers are already preparing to move around with armored buses. Two former Central Command chiefs warned that Homesh alone would become a security burden and harm Palestinians. Senior IDF officers told Haaretz the entire project would require many additional forces. "It starts with securing roads and ends with response units, intelligence, surveillance, patrols and protecting families and children in the event of an attack," one officer said. Human rights groups warn: if a settler is harmed, the army will respond forcefully against the population, drawing the entire area into a spiral of violence.

Moreover, they also warn that settlers will push to create new roads linking the settlements, including through Area A (which remains off-limits to Israelis). Indeed, one such route already appears on maps presented by Head of Samaria Regional Council Yossi Dagan and in campaign materials bearing the Settlement Ministry logo.

For this investigation, Haaretz traveled the newly opened roads, visited most of the new settlements and planned sites, and collected data with the organizations Kerem Navot and Peace Now. Haaretz attended a settlement population ceremony, visited Palestinian communities, spoke with residents and saw the area's military bases firsthand. Additional information came from satellite imagery taken by the private satellite company Planet Labs and the European Union's Copernicus Earth observation programme, as well as dozens of verified videos and photographs and data from human rights organizations and the United Nations. Haaretz also listened to speeches by Central Command head Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, examined military warrants and spoke with military and political sources.

The findings indicate that the settlement project in the northern West Bank is materializing with massive military support and resources. Central Command chief Bluth recently said in a closed forum: "We are heading toward a very, very big change in northern Samaria. They will have to consider whether, in the face of such a major challenge, Judea and Samaria should stay as a single [IDF] division or rather two divisions."

However, the officers who spoke with Haaretz said that the political leadership held almost no in-depth discussions with the IDF about the operational implications of the settlement project. They noted that the military is already stretched across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, the Jordanian border and the home front, and now, new missions are being added without additional forces. "There has been no discussion of the issue, and the army was never even asked to present its professional assessment of a move that will fundamentally change Central Command's entire security doctrine," one officer said.

This is what the IDF's return to the area looks like.

Jenin is one of three refugee camps in the northern West Bank that the IDF has heavily damaged and whose residents have been displaced. According to the UN Satellite Centre, 55 percent of structures in Nur Shams refugee camp were destroyed or damaged, and so were 37 percent of structures in Tulkarm camp. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been displaced, according to UNRWA, which defined it as the largest displacement of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank since 1967. Human Rights Watch said it was a crime against humanity.

The military viewed the campaign as part of the fight against terrorism. Among the camps' tens of thousands of residents were Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas militants, as well as armed young men with no formal affiliation. In July 2023, the military launched a major operation in the area following terror attacks in both the West Bank and Israel. That operation – called Home and Garden – and the operations that followed, marked an unusual use of wartime methods in the West Bank, including the deployment of tanks in Jenin for the first time in 20 years and unprecedented use of armed drones.

After Hamas' surprise attack and the October 7 massacre, the IDF underwent a fundamental shift in its security doctrine. Israel's leadership began treating the West Bank as a war front, and military force was stepped up accordingly.

When the IDF launched Operation Iron Wall in January 2025, troops again entered the camps – but unlike previous incursions, they did not leave. Today, Central Command chief Bluth speaks of "reshaping the landscape," a vision of "terrorists meeting the army on their side, not at checkpoints," more permissive rules of engagement and an approach that works "like a blender, turning the boulder into gravel" to prevent another attack like October 7 in the West Bank. Palestinian civilians, including women and children, have been killed as a result of the military operations. In one high-profile case in the area, Israeli forces shot a couple and their four children as they returned from a shopping trip in Nablus. Only two of the children survived.

The military rationale has aligned with the long-term goals of the settlers who want to return to the northern West Bank.

Notably, Finance Minister and Defense Ministry minister Bezalel Smotrich said at the start of the January 2025 operation: "Today, with God's help, we began changing the security doctrine in Judea and Samaria as well, as part of the campaign to eradicate terrorism in the area. This is part of the war aims added by the cabinet at the demand of the Religious Zionism party. Operation Iron Wall will be an intensive and sustained campaign against terrorist organizations and those who foster them, to protect the settlements and their residents and to safeguard the security of the entire State of Israel, for which the settlement enterprise serves as a security belt."

Additionally, the army is undergoing a process of integration with the settlement movement, whose graduates have been appointed to key positions. The most prominent example is Central Command chief Bluth, the top military authority in the West Bank. Bluth grew up in the settlement of Neve Tzuf and is a graduate of the Eli pre-military academy. Smotrich has said there has never been a Head of Central Command as supportive of settlements as Bluth. Serving under him is Brig. Gen. Kobi Heller, commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, who grew up in the settlement Karnei Shomron and studied at a yeshiva in Gush Katif, the southern Gaza settlement bloc evacuated in 2005. At his inauguration, Heller spoke of his youth in Samaria, and pledged that the division would be "a central enabler for settlement to continue its momentum, growth and development."

The spread of settler ideas and worldviews within the military can also be seen in its focus on heritage and archaeology. For example, Samaria Brigade commander Col. Ariel Gonen was featured in a video aimed at connecting soldiers with Jewish heritage sites in the northern West Bank – a project that also promotes settler propaganda.

Soldiers from the Netzach Israel Battalion filmed themselves in a video in the Dotan Valley discussing the area's Jewish historical significance. More broadly, religion, heritage and archaeology have become increasingly tied to efforts to reshape the northern West Bank. A Civil Administration archaeologist argued that the absence of Jews from the area contributed to rising terrorism. And the expropriation of land from the Palestinian village of Sebastia for archaeological development – the largest such expropriation since 1967 – is turning the site into another strategic foothold in the area's settlement network.

Lawmakers have also tried to advance legislation that would transfer authority over archaeological sites in the West Bank, including Areas A and B, to an Israeli state body. Legal experts said the proposal was a clear act of annexation and would have contradicted the Oslo Accords.

The settlers' long political project to return to the northern West Bank reached a turning point when Netanyahu's current government was sworn in late 2022. The coalition agreement between Likud and Religious Zionism included a commitment to repeal the disengagement legislation. The settler movement, driven by ideology, took over key power positions within government. The clearest example was Smotrich's appointment by Netanyahu as a minister within the Defense Ministry giving him unprecedented authority over civilian affairs in the West Bank. "Defense Minister Israel Katz is barely involved in anything related to the West Bank," two senior IDF officers told Haaretz. They said Katz largely leaves decisions regarding issues such as settlements and infrastructure to Smotrich, who does not take into account the army's considerations.

In addition, settlers for whom the experience of expulsion during the disengagement was a defining life experience, devoted years to political campaigns and rose to positions of influence. Deputy Knesset Speaker Limor Son Har-Melech, who was evacuated from Homesh, was a leading advocate for its resettlement and one of the initiators of the legislation to repeal the Disengagement Law. Yehuda Eliyahu, who grew up in Gush Katif and co-founded the influential settler organization Regavim, recently headed the Defense Ministry's Settlement Administration and now leads the Israel Land Authority.

Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee chairman Simcha Rothman, who was educated in Gush Katif, linked the disengagement to his campaign against Israel's judicial system. Rothman recently visited the outpost near Homesh and called for dismantling political and security arrangements with the Palestinian Authority – and deeper Israeli incursions into territory under its control. And, within the Likud, there are longtime advocates of reversing the disengagement, including former Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and MK Ariel Kallner, who has said he became religious following the disengagement.

But it is not just the ideologues.

Cabinet ministers – including Transportation Minister Miri Regev, who served as the IDF's spokesperson during the disengagement – regularly visit the most prominent figure in the return to the northern West Bank project: Head of Samaria Regional Council Yossi Dagan, himself evacuated from Sa-Nur. For more than a decade, Dagan has built influence over the state's decision-making mechanism. He heads the My Likud membership organization and has become a central recruiter of party members. The My Likud website explains its strategy: "It is time to leave the frustration behind and become a central part of the decision-making process. Instead of merely voting in elections, determine who are the candidates everyone else votes for." Indeed, politicians regularly visit Dagan, pose for photographs with him and see those images circulated through right-wing media and social networks. Many attended his daughter's bat mitzvah just recently. With Likud primaries approaching – which are expected to be a difficult contest for many ministers and lawmakers – Dagan's ability to influence decision-makers – and their political future – has become particularly significant.

Today, Dagan is one of Israel's most influential figures – and his reach now extends beyond domestic politics, into Europe and the United States. He has cultivated close ties with Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who met Dagan in the settlement of Ariel during what became the highest-profile visit by an American politician to the West Bank, and later met him again in Washington.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee received an "honorary Samarian citizenship" from Dagan, as have other Republican lawmakers and evangelical figures who were presented with gifts from Samaria. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met Dagan in 2018, when Hegseth was still a Fox News host. The two toured a site identified as the Tomb of Joshua Bin-Nun in the Palestinian village of Kifl Haris, a visit Hegseth described as "a highlight of my life". Dagan has also directed his efforts at U.S. President Donald Trump. He campaigned on Trump's behalf, said voting for Trump is "critical", met administration advisers and spoke at an event at Mar-a-Lago. Last year, he named a well-known lookout point near the settlement of Peduel after Trump. The president took notice and shared an article about it on Truth Social.

Through extensive ties built over years with the American right, Dagan aims to ensure that the United States does not oppose Israeli annexation efforts and may even support them.

Israel's return to the northern West Bank is unfolding within a broader context. The settlement movement has set its sights on strategic goals. Dismantling the Oslo accords appears to be the next major objective. At the same time, annexation of the West Bank has gained significant traction within Likud in recent years. And Smotrich, author of the "Decisive Plan," recently said that Israel's next government should "encourage migration" of Palestinians from the West Bank. "In the long term there is no other solution," he argued. The forces driving the return to the northern West Bank are moving quickly to create facts on the ground before the national elections expected later this year. Whether the process slows or accelerates will depend largely on the next U.S. administration – and the composition of Israel's next government.

Responses
The Defense Ministry: "The defense minister held discussions on the matter with the IDF chief of staff, the commander of Central Command, the head of the Civil Administration and numerous other officials. At the defense minister's instruction, the Defense Ministry and the IDF conducted extensive staff work, the findings of which were presented to the minister. Any other claim is entirely baseless."

The IDF: "The article presents security measures implemented in the area as part of the IDF's operational approach and in accordance with situational assessments and operational considerations. Any attempt to attribute the IDF's actions in the area to political or ideological motives is incorrect.

"Contrary to the impression the article seeks to create, the military presence in the area stems from a clear security necessity aimed at preventing the reemergence of terrorist organizations and thwarting attacks. In recent years, the northern West Bank has been a major center of terrorist activity, from which numerous attacks against Israeli civilians and security forces were planned and carried out, and where 'terror battalions' emerged in refugee camps throughout the area.

"To address this reality, the IDF was required to adopt a different operational approach, increasing its activity in the area and carrying out dozens of operations targeting terrorist infrastructure. This followed repeated attempts by the Palestinian security forces to deal with the phenomenon, which did not fully resolve the problem. Since the IDF changed its operational approach in January 2025, the security reality has changed dramatically, and the number of terrorist incidents has fallen by dozens of percent — a trend that continues today.

"The IDF does not determine settlement policy and is not involved in promoting it. Rather, it operates in accordance with decisions made by the political echelon. Following the repeal by the political leadership of provisions of the Disengagement Law in the northern West Bank, the IDF fulfilled its responsibilities by determining the operational conditions and requirements necessary to ensure the security of residents in the area, including the establishment of military outposts. It should be noted that petitions have been filed with the High Court of Justice regarding the IDF's actions in the area, and that the Supreme Court found there to be a security need for those actions and declined to intervene.

"The IDF continues to operate against terrorism in the northern West Bank in accordance with international law and High Court rulings, while making every possible effort to avoid harm to the civilian population. At this stage, there remains a security need for the IDF to continue its presence in the refugee camps. Access for the Palestinian population is coordinated on an ongoing basis and is subject to situational assessments."

Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, did not respond to Haaretz's request for comment.

Field photography: Tomer Appelbaum. Additional reporting: Josh Breiner

Digital project management: Uri Talshir. Development: Asi Oren. Design: Danielle Arbib. Video: Ayala Berger and Shahar Malahi. Infographics: Nadav Gazit. English production: Gal Cohen and Shira Philosof.

Satellite and aerial imagery: Planet Labs PBC, the Survey of Israel and Peace Now.

For the purposes of this investigation, the northern West Bank is defined as the area north of Nablus and excluding the Jordan Valley. Population data according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics as of 2025. Mapping of established settlements, Palestinian communities and Oslo Accord boundaries is based on data from Peace Now. Mapping of outposts is based on data from Kerem Navot. Mapping of the separation barrier and the West Bank road network is based on OCHA data. Mapping of destruction in Jenin refugee camp is based on data from Human Rights Watch and UNOSAT.

For the purposes of this journalistic report, we have made limited use of videos and photographs whose creators we were unable to identify, including under Sections 50(a1) and 27(a) of Israel's Copyright Law. If you recognize a photograph or video that you created, you may contact and inform us at news@haaretz.co.il.