Promotion of 1408 Housing Units in the West Bank

The Higher Planning Council will convene on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, to discuss the approval of 1,408 housing units across four settlements: Mesoa, Hashmonaim, Beit Hagai, Zait Raanan (Talmon).

Since early December 2024, the Higher Planning Council has been holding weekly meetings to advance settlement housing projects, with approvals at each session ranging from several hundred to over a thousand units. The discussion on March 5, 2025, aims to approve 1,408 housing units, marking a record number since the transition to weekly deliberations. Among the proposed plans are 460 housing units in the settlement of Zeit Raanan (Talmon) and 225 units in the isolated settlement of Beit Hagai, situated between Hebron and the Beit Fuwar refugee camp.

The shift to approving plans on a weekly basis not only normalizes construction in these areas but also accelerates it. For instance, with the plans set for discussion on Wednesday, March 5, 2025, the total number of units promoted since the beginning of 2025 will reach 7,702 HU for three months.

One of the changes made by the Netanyahu-Smotrich government in June 2023 was the elimination of the need for defense minister approval for each stage of settlement plan advancement. Previously, every construction plan in settlements required prior approval from the defense minister. In recent years, the defense minister had limited settlement plan advancements to approximately four times a year, with thousands of housing units being approved in a single session of the Higher Planning Council. In recent weeks, we have witnessed a change where the Higher Planning Council meets every week and approves several hundred housing units in each meeting. In this way, the government seeks to normalize planning in settlements and attract less public and international attention and criticism.