Fresh Air

Given that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition consists of right-wing or religious parties that are supportive of Israel’s West Bank settlements, it was expected that West Bank settlement activity would increase. According to one metric – that is, housing approvals (part of the process that can lead to new construction but doesn’t always) – it has. This is primarily because the ability to advance approvals in this Government was given over to outspoken settlement supporter, Minister in the Defense Ministry Betzalel Smotrich.

However – and this is crucial to understand – Smotrich cannot unilaterally build houses in the West Bank. Smotrich’s powers can be understood using the analogy of a driver stepping on an accelerator pedal without putting the car into gear. There’s a lot of noise, but the car doesn’t actually go anywhere.

In truth, where the bulldozer meets the ground in terms of growth or lack thereof – that is, in actual housing starts, new housing sales and in demolition of new unauthorised settlement outposts and farms – unexpectedly perhaps, settlement activity is completely floundering under the current Government.

Let’s look at the data.

Housing starts in settlements at all-time low

On June 20, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics issued its annual report of new housing starts over the previous year (April 2023-March 2024). The data showed new housing starts in Judea and Samaria (i.e. West Bank) has fallen to an all-time low since 2000, which is as far back as detailed records of this kind have been available on the internet.

That’s right: The 17 housing starts recorded in Q1, 2024 are 48% lower than the 33 that were recorded in Q1, 2010, the nadir reached during Prime Minister Netanyahu’s self-imposed nine-month freeze at the urging of then-US President Barack Obama.

Nor is it an anomaly – it’s a trend, as only 87 housing starts were recorded in Q4, 2023. Initially, based on an article by Israeli journalist Hagai Segal published in January 2024, I believed this phenomenon was directly connected to a decision by the settler movement not to allow Palestinian construction workers into their settlements for security reasons after the Hamas attack on October 7.

However, according to the data on housing completions, half-built homes were completed in Q4,2023 and Q1 ,2024. If sourcing labor was the problem, we would expect to see housing completions almost entirely halted as well, but while it has slowed, that is just not the case.

New housing sales nearly halved

Ok, so I’ve just mentioned that housing completions in the settlements are down, but not anywhere near to the extent that housing starts are. But are those new units actually selling? Not according to the latest data. In the first five months of 2024, only 197 new units marketed in the settlements were sold, compared to 364 units sold in the first five months of 2023. That’s a 46% decline.

IDF is demolishing unauthorised settler outposts at a furious pace

That’s not all. Even persistent efforts by settler activists to build new outposts are being shut down. According to a July 17 report by Israel Hayom‘s Hanan Greenwood (Hebrew edition), the IDF has forcibly dismantled 44 settler outposts since the beginning of 2024 – approximately two per week. According to settler activists interviewed in the article, the demolitions have been focused on outposts that were built along the main road that connect Palestinian cities in Samaria, north of Jerusalem. They suggested the demolitions were intended to preserve the possibility of implementing a two-state peace agreement with the Palestinians sometime in the future.

Conclusion

Contrary to all the publicity about Minister Smotrich’s advancement of approvals for construction in Israel’s West Bank settlements, actual housing starts are at an all-time low and even sales of completed units are sluggish.

While this may seem surprising, reports of conversations between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden from 2023 suggest that Netanyahu gave Biden verbal assurances that regardless of whatever announcements might be made in order to satisfy his coalition partners, actual construction would be restrained. (See reports by Israeli journalists Barak Ravid and Amir Tibon from exactly a year ago.)

Especially during wartime, it makes sense that even an Israeli government that journalists often call the “most right wing in history” would make an effort to lower tension with the Biden Administration on the contentious issue of West Bank settlements, and indeed that appears to be what the facts clearly show, at least in terms of the important construction and housing metrics revealed here.