UNITED NATIONS, United States — The expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is at its highest level since at least 2017, when the United Nations began tracking such data, according to a report by the United Nations secretary-general seen by AFP on Friday.

 

In 2025, "plans for nearly 47,390 housing units were advanced, approved, or tendered, compared with some 26,170 in 2024," the report said.

 

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned what he called the "relentless" expansion in a statement accompanying the report, 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."

 

Israel’s security cabinet has signed off on plans to formalise 19 illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank, in a move Palestinian officials say deepens a decades-long project of land theft and demographic engineering.

 

Israeli media reported on Friday that the decision also revives two northern West Bank outposts dismantled during the 2005 “disengagement”.