Table Stakes - December 22nd

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I’m Atlas, and welcome to Table Stakes!

Here’s a look at today’s topics:

• Israel’s Cabinet Greenlights Proposal For 19 New Settlements In The West Bank

• U.S. Special Envoy Witkoff Praises ‘Constructive’ Talks To End War Between Russia-Ukraine

• 130 Nigerian Children And Staff Released After November Kidnapping

Israel’s Cabinet Greenlights Proposal For 19 New Settlements In The West Bank

_{By: Atlas}

Israel's cabinet has approved 19 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced Sunday, bringing the total number of settlements approved over the past three years to 69.

The decision marks a record pace of settlement expansion under the current government and represents a nearly 50 percent increase in the number of settlements since the far-right coalition took power. According to Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, there were 141 settlements across the West Bank in 2022. After the latest approval, there are 210.

Smotrich's office said the security cabinet approved the proposal on December 11, but the development had been classified until now.

"The people of Israel are returning to their land, building it and strengthening their hold on it," Smotrich wrote on social media. "We are stopping the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state. We will continue to develop, build and settle in the land of our ancestors."

Settlements in the West Bank are widely considered illegal under international law. The International Court of Justice declared last year that the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal.

Details of the approval

The cabinet decision includes the retroactive legalization of some previously established settlement outposts or neighborhoods of existing settlements, as well as the creation of settlements on land where Palestinians were evacuated, according to the Finance Ministry.

Smotrich's office said 11 of the 19 are newly designated settlements, while eight are existing but previously unrecognized outposts that have now been granted official legal status under Israeli law.

Two of the settlements approved in the latest decision are Kadim and Ganim, located in the northern West Bank. Both were among four settlements dismantled in 2005 as part of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

"After 20 years, we are righting a painful injustice and returning Ganim and Kadim to the settlement map," Smotrich said.

The Israeli government in March 2023 repealed a 2005 act that had evacuated the four outposts and barred Israelis from reentering those areas. There have been multiple attempts to resettle them since.

Settlements can range in size from a single dwelling to a collection of high-rise buildings. Smotrich's office described the 19 newly approved locations as being in "highly strategic" areas.

Settlement expansion under current government

Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 war. The Palestinians claim these territories for a future state.

More than 500,000 Jews with Israeli citizenship currently live in the West Bank, with an additional 200,000 in contested East Jerusalem. Approximately three million Palestinians reside in the West Bank.

Israel's government is dominated by far-right proponents of the settler movement, including Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the nation's police force.

Smotrich, who is himself a settler, also holds a senior position in the defense ministry overseeing settlement activities. He and Defense Minister Israel Katz jointly proposed the plan approved by the cabinet.

Before the current coalition took power in 2022, Israel had approved and built roughly 140 settlements since capturing the West Bank in 1967. The government has signed off on nearly 70 more in just the past three years.

A United Nations report said settlement expansion is at its highest point since 2017, when the organization began tracking such data.

"These figures represent a sharp increase compared to previous years," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said earlier this month, noting an average of 12,815 housing units were added annually between 2017 and 2022.

Guterres condemned what he described as Israel's "relentless" expansion, saying it "continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous and sovereign Palestinian State."

Implications for peace efforts

The approval comes as the United States pushes Israel and Hamas to move ahead with the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, which took effect October 10. The US-brokered plan calls for a possible "pathway" to a Palestinian state, something the settlements are aimed at preventing.

"On the ground, we are blocking the establishment of a Palestinian terror state," Smotrich said in his statement.

President Donald Trump has warned Israel against annexing the West Bank.

"Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened," Trump said in a recent interview with Time magazine.

At a UN Security Council briefing on December 16, Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN deputy special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, warned of the Israeli cabinet's vote.

"In 2025, settlement advancement reached its highest point since U.N. tracking began in 2017," Alakbarov said, urging Israel to cease its settlement activities in accordance with the International Court of Justice ruling.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the decision. PA Minister Mu'ayyad Sha'ban called the announcement another step to erase Palestinian geography, claiming that the decision raised serious alarms over the future of the West Bank.

Peace Now said establishing settlements in areas where Israel has not previously had a presence "is intended to sever Palestinian territorial continuity and to destroy what little economic development remains possible for Palestinians."

Settler violence and West Bank unrest

Settlement expansion has been compounded by a surge of attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank in recent months.

During October's olive harvest, settlers across the territory launched an average of eight attacks daily, the most since the United Nations humanitarian office began collecting data in 2006. The attacks continued in November, with the UN recording at least 136 more by November 24.

Settlers burned cars, desecrated mosques, ransacked industrial plants and destroyed cropland. Israeli authorities have done little beyond issuing occasional condemnations of the violence.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah said two Palestinians, including a 16-year-old, were killed in clashes with Israel's military on Saturday night in the northern West Bank.

Israel's military said a militant was shot and killed after he threw a block at troops in Qabatiya, and another was killed after he hurled explosives at troops operating in the town of Silat al-Harithiya.

The Health Ministry identified the Palestinian killed in Qabatiya as 16-year-old Rayan Abu Muallah. Palestinian media aired brief security footage of the incident in which the youth appears to emerge from an alley and is shot by troops as he approaches them. Israel's military said the incident is under review.

The military has scaled up operations in the West Bank since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack that triggered the war in Gaza.

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