ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The Israeli Security Cabinet on Sunday approved the creation of 19 new settlements in the West Bank, increasing the total number of organized settlements in the region to 69 over the past three years.

The decision was backed by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. No official date for the implementation of the decision has been set.

Smotrich, in a statement on the X platform, said the move is intended to "block the creation of a terrorist Palestinian state" and continue building on land they claim as ancestral.

The decision includes the reestablishment of the Gani Akiva and Kadumim settlements, in the West Bank, often referred to as Judea and Samaria by hardline Israeli figures seeking to diminish the claims of indigenous Palestinians to their homeland.

Smotrich emphasized that organizing 69 settlements in three years is a significant achievement, promising to continue development, construction, and settlement in the region. "We believe in the righteousness of this path," he added.

Violence across the West Bank surged alongside Israel’s genocide in Gaza that has seen over 70,000 Palestinians killed since October 7, 2023, according to local health authorities.

Rights groups and UN officials say that, under the cover of the Gaza offensive, Israeli forces and settlers have stepped up raids, shootings, land seizures, and restrictions on Palestinian movement in the occupied territory.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers now live in communities scattered across the West Bank, territory Israel has occupied since 1967. These settlements are deemed illegal under international law.

A report issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2024 asserted that settlements "effectively [transfer] the civilian population of Israel to the occupied territory while displacing the Palestinian population from their land, in violation of international law."

"The policies of the current Government of Israel appear aligned, to an unprecedented extent, with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to expand long-term control over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to steadily integrate this occupied territory into the State of Israel," the report continued.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in August said that he feels a "connection" to the notion of a Greater Israel, a vision of an Israeli state that expands beyond its current borders to entail the remainder of Palestinian land and territories belonging to neighboring countries.