Afrasianet - The city of Nablus, the largest governorate in the northern West Bank, is suffering from rampant settlement in its various locations, north, south, east and west, and with this settlement escalation, settler attacks and their various forms of violence against citizens in the governorate have escalated.
Day after day, Nablus governorate is witnessing forms of this settlement expansion and the accompanying military escalation of the occupation army, in which the governorate is besieged by at least 10 fixed military checkpoints, dozens of iron military gates and earthen dams scattered among its villages, which cut off the city's connections.
Below we try to understand the settlement penetration in Nablus, its goals, the most prominent forms of suffering that Palestinians are experiencing as a result, and whether the settlement is actually designed to change the geography of the governorate, which includes more than 60 communities.
When and how did the settlement process in Nablus progress?
The governorate of Nablus, like the rest of the West Bank, fell under Israeli occupation in 1967, and Israeli settlement in it went through stages of development, as in the period from 1967 to 1976, two settlements were established in it selectively, as part of a settlement policy based on quality rather than quantity, and these settlements were concentrated in the Jordan Valley area inspired by what was known as the Allon Plan.
The period from 1977 to 1984 is considered the surge of settlement expansion in the governorate, in which 10 of the 25 settlements that currently exist were established, as well as dozens of outposts, and this period witnessed the rise of the Likud party to power in Israel, and the growing influence of the Gush Amunim settlement movement.
The description of the "Shechem Group" – the first right-wing nucleus of the "Beitar Youth" (the "liberal right") that tried to start the settlement movement in Nablus – was to confirm its belief that all the occupied territories (Mandatory Palestine ) belong to the "Jewish people" and oppose the surrender of some of them in any peace agreements.
It can be said that the period of the 1990s witnessed a decline in the pace of settlement and its expansion, and only one settlement was established in Nablus, due to the peace process, negotiations and the settlement freeze.
Under what name do these settlements come in? How did they evolve in their numbers and forms?
Most of the settlements in Nablus governorate were concentrated on the mountainous slopes, besieging Palestinian villages, preventing their development and changing their nature, plundering their resources, and confiscating thousands of dunams of land.
Their forms also varied between residential, tourist, industrial, military and agricultural, as "Mukhura and Jatit" emerged as agricultural settlements, due to their location near the Jordan Valley, while the settlements of "Alon Moreh and Shilo" took on an industrial character.
Since the occupation of the West Bank and the beginning of the expansion of settlements in 1967 until 2022, the occupation has built 13 settlements and 30 outposts, in addition to 14 military sites, occupying about 12,150 dunums (one dunam equals one thousand square meters), and has now risen to 18 settlements and 53 outposts.
From about 16,000 settlers living there until 2014, the number has risen to about 25,200 now, says Amir Daoud, director of documentation at the Commission for Resistance to the Wall and Settlements.
The settlements of Yitzhar, Eli, Magdalim, Shevut Rachel, Bracha, Alon Moreh, Shavei Shomron, Itamar, and Homesh are among the most prominent of these settlements, which spawn settlement outposts such as the Scali Farm in Alon Moreh, the Hankuda outpost of Itamar, Sneh Yaakov from Bracha and others, while "Huwara", "Mount Gerizim" and "Mount Eibal" are among its most prominent camps, and together confiscated thousands of other dunams.
How did the settlement violence in Nablus shape and what were its most prominent events?
With the emergence of these settlements, especially the outposts, most of which are inhabited by religious settlers, and their expansion at the expense of Palestinian land and property, unprecedented acts of violence by settlers, led by extremist groups such as the Hilltop Youth, the "Price Raiser," the Netzah Yehuda, and others emerged.
On Friday, July 31, 2015, one of the most violent settler attacks took place, when they attacked the family of Saad Dawabsheh, 30, in the village of Duma, south of the city, and threw Molotov cocktails containing flammable materials at their house, killing Saad, his wife Reham (27), and their infant child Ali, and their son Ahmed, who was 4 years old at the time, as the only survivor of the family. This crime was a matter of international and local opinion, which was condemned by human rights and international organizations.
Such acts of settlement violence have created reactions among Palestinians, especially in light of the unprecedented violence of occupation in the West Bank in general , Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip , as Palestinians carried out acts of resistance that led to the killing of several Israelis on Huwara Street, south of Nablus, especially between 2022 and 2023.
On 26 February, under the cover and protection of the Israeli army, settlers launched a violent attack on Huwara, killing a Palestinian and injuring about 400 others, and burning citizens' property valued at millions of dollars.
How did Israel use these scavengers to implement its settlement agenda?
According to Amir Daoud, the burning of the Dawabsha family's house in Douma in 2015 and the organized attack on the town of Huwara in 2023 were two milestones in the escalation of colonizer terrorism in Nablus governorate, as the first embodied the deliberate targeting of a family inside its home, and the second represented a transition to attacking an entire town and burning its property.
The Tal massacre in July 2026 marks the beginning of a more dangerous level, in which attacks by armed settlers are integrated with the intervention of the occupation forces, confirming the transition of these attacks from sporadic incidents to an organized pattern that targets both the Palestinian population and geography.
How did the escalation of settlement violence after October 2023 reflect on Nablus?
The danger of settlement expansion never stopped in Nablus, but escalated further after 2023, as the occupation was quick to legislate several outposts, and gradually return to settlements evacuated by Israel in 2005, with Gaza settlements, such as the settlement of Homesh, north of Nablus, which spawn a new outpost such as "Bayezid", and the occupation is working to link it to other settlements in the northern West Bank, according to the PLO's Land Defense Center.
The danger was further compounded by the inauguration of the Ebal outpost (pastoral and residential) on the highest mountain peak in Nablus (Ebal) in March 2026, employing biblical pretexts, such as the "Altar of Joshua Ben Nun" in the Barnat area on the mountain, in order to overturn the Israeli Cabinet decision issued in May 2025, which legalized and established 22 new settlement outposts in the West Bank, the most prominent of which was Mount Ebal, according to the Center for the Defense of the Land.
The Anti-Wall and Settlement Commission also revealed last Saturday that the occupation issued 3 orders to take security measures aimed at removing vegetation and uprooting olive trees from the lands of the villages of Salem, Burin and Madama in Nablus governorate, which affected an actual area estimated at about 69 dunums, which it did in the village of Cyrenaica recently, and removed more than 500 trees from the edges of the road at its main entrance under security pretexts.
However, the main danger of these orders is not limited to the targeted areas and trees, but also that they were issued after the occupying forces had carried out the removal operations on the ground, which turns them from pre-implementation decisions to a procedural cover after an act has been completed, according to the Commission.
Why the settlement targeting of the city of Nablus?
Amir Daoud says that the Nablus governorate is witnessing a colonial acceleration and what we are experiencing today is reaching the peak of accumulations that extend from the first moment of the occupation, because it represents a central geographical node in the northern West Bank.
Therefore, the new outposts are concentrated on strategic locations, such as Jabal Ebal, the vicinity of Awarta, Tal and Asira al-Qibliya, with the aim of filling the gaps between the existing colonies and turning them into interconnected blocs.
This acceleration is not a random movement of groups of colonizers, but rather the result of a government policy in which the establishment of outposts is integrated with the construction of roads, laying down orders, establishing buffer zones, and providing military protection and services, in preparation for the stabilization of the outposts and later turning them into recognized colonies according to the occupation regime.
The ultimate goal, according to Daoud, is to re-engineer the governorate's geography: to isolate the city of Nablus from its countryside, to cut off communication between villages, to control agricultural land and the highlands, and to weaken the governorate's status as a major economic and population center.
Hence, the process of establishing outposts is accompanied by the escalation of colonizers' attacks and military restrictions, as the Nablus governorate recorded 2095 attacks during the first half of 2026, placing it in third place among the Palestinian governorates in terms of the number of attacks.
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