As the U.K. Sanctions Settler Farms, Israel Expands Them
Only last week, Britain announced sanctions on Israel`s Farms Association, which coordinates the activities of and support for settler farms in the West Bank, the settlers` flagship project since 7 October 2023. But in Israel, a criminal government is in power, and instead of stopping crime, it whitewashes it: The Defense Ministry and the military are advancing regulations to legalize these farms, in effect laundering land stolen from the Palestinians.
The state`s conduct is not surprising; after all, the settlers did not steal these lands on their own. There are around 100 farms in the West Bank today that were established with the encouragement of the state and in coordination with the Israel Defense Forces. The farms are highly popular within the settlement movement, and their numbers have soared in recent years. Their advantage is that they enable the takeover of vast areas without the need for many settlers. As the settler movement leader Ze`ev Hever ("Zambish") has said, the area occupied by these farms is 2.5 times the area occupied by all the hundreds of settlements."
This is how the method worked: Unlike other settlement outposts, the farms were established by allocating grazing land on "state land" (which is, of course, the land not of the State of Israel but rather of the State of Palestine) that the World Zionist Organization`s Settlement Division transferred to the settlers. This allocation was the legal pretext for establishing the farms, but in practice, they seized much larger areas. Only 40 percent of the area controlled by the farms is "state land." It must be stressed that even this land should never have been allocated, since what Israel considers state land in the West Bank is, in fact, Palestinian land. Today, the farms cover around 250,000 acres.
The settlement enterprise has enabled the expulsion of more than 60 Palestinian herding communities across the West Bank. Residents of the farms encourage this displacement through threats, harassment, denial of access to pasture and land seizures. Nevertheless, the Israeli government takes no action against the farms. On the contrary, the settlers in the governing coalition found a sympathetic ear in the government. In March, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the legalization regulations fast-tracked, and they are under legal review. This involves adapting West Bank legislation to Israeli legislation, following the Knesset`s passage in March 2025 of a law legalizing residential buildings on ranches in Israel proper. The move was meant to make it easier to establish new herding farms and lend legitimacy to an enterprise that has already changed the face of the West Bank.
Israel is taking advantage of the fog of war and the cease-fires to deepen its control over land in the West Bank. The farms are an important tool for expelling and dispossessing Palestinians, and the attempt to legalize them will never make them legal in the eyes of the world.
These are crimes that must be addressed in Israel for what they are, and the international community must do the same.
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Photo: A Palestinian family watches over their land under siege in the West Bank, October 2025. Source: Wisam Hashlamoun / Andalou via AFP.
