Amid Gaza genocide, Israel announces plan for 3,300 settler units in occupied West Bank

News Network

February 24, 2024

The cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans to build more than 3,300 new settler units in the occupied West Bank amid the ongoing war on the besieged Gaza Strip.

The announcement was made by Israel's extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said in a statement that the plan includes 2,350 new units in Ma’ale Adumim, 300 in Kedar and 694 in Efrat.

Smotrich said the plan was a response to a retaliatory Palestinian shooting attack on a checkpoint near the occupied West Bank on Thursday, during which an Israeli settler was killed and 11 others injured.

The statement said the construction plan enjoyed backing from Netanyahu as well as Israeli minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant and minister of strategic affairs Ron Dermer.

The Israeli ministers also called for increased curbs on Palestinians, including heavy restrictions on movement after the retaliatory attack in the area.

The Israeli regime has over the past decades advanced plans to build new illegal settlements while the US and its allies have historically done little to pressure Tel Aviv to halt or roll back the illegal settlement expansion.

Tel Aviv has stepped up settlement expansion since December 2022, when Netanyahu staged a comeback as prime minister at the head of a cabinet of hard-right and ultra-Orthodox parties.

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The international community views the settlements – hundreds of which have been built across the West Bank since Tel Aviv’s occupation of the territory in 1967 – as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions due to their construction on the occupied territories.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state with East al-Quds as its capital.

Lukewarm US reaction

The move is almost certain to stoke up fresh storm in Washington, which is already under massive domestic and international pressure over its untrammeled support for Israel in the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Reacting tepidly to Smotrich’s statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the construction of new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank was a “disappointing” decision.

“It has been a longstanding policy of both Democratic and Republican administrations that new settlements are counterproductive to achieving enduring peace. They are also inconsistent with international law,” Blinken said at a news conference late Friday.

“Our administration maintains firm opposition to settlement expansion,” he added. r during Israel’s brutal aggression, which began following Operation al-Aqsa Storm by Gaza-based resistance movements in October last year.

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UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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