WEST BANK, (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Hamas Movement affirmed that the Israeli occupation authorities are intensifying their settlement projects in the West Bank with the aim of imposing new facts on the ground and displacing Palestinian residents from their lands.
In a press statement on Wednesday, Hamas leader Abdul Rahman Shadid said that the Israeli escalation in the West Bank governorates, accompanied by confiscation, bulldozing operations, and repeated settler attacks on Palestinian lands and properties, “represents a systematic attempt to change the geographic reality and impose full Israeli sovereignty over the area.”
Shadid warned of the dangers of the new settlement and military project in the town of Raba, southeast of Jenin, pointing out that it is part of a series of similar projects being carried out by the occupation authorities in Tubas, Nablus, Tulkarem, and al-Khalil, all aiming to empty the land of its indigenous inhabitants.
He praised the steadfastness of the residents of Raba, along with the people of Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps in the West Bank, who continue to resist settlement and Judaization policies, stressing that “this land will remain Palestinian in identity and will not accept invaders.”
Shadid called on the Palestinian masses, especially the youth, to widely participate in the popular events scheduled for tomorrow, Friday, and to escalate field confrontations with the occupation forces and settlers by all possible means.
Settlement expansion has clearly escalated in recent years. The organization Peace Now revealed in statements based on data from the Israeli Higher Planning Council that “in 2022, Israel approved 4,427 construction plans across the West Bank, rising to 12,349 in 2023. After decreasing to 9,971 in 2024, in the first three months of 2025 alone, 14,335 settlement construction plans have already been approved in the West Bank.”
