Illegal Palestinian construction in the West Bank threatens all Israelis

The Gaza perimeter security failure

In 2021, the Israeli government completed construction of a 65-kilometer security barrier along its border with Gaza. In the words of then-defense minister Benny Gantz, “The barrier is a technological and creative project of supreme importance, which takes away from Hamas one of the capabilities it tried to develop.”

On October 7, 2023, Israel awoke to a living nightmare: Thousands of Hamas terrorists breached the Gaza barrier, killing some 1,200 people in a single day.

Security concepts in Judea and Samaria

The murder of Jews is a central tenet of the PLO charter, subsumed in the foundations of the Palestinian Authority, which continues to advocate armed conflict as the only way to liberate Palestine. Acts of terrorism in Judea and Samaria are part of the Fayyad Plan, as it now known, which is a framework for the Palestinian takeover of all of Judea and Samaria through a variety of means, among them massive illegal construction. In tandem with Palestinian terrorism, over the years nearly 100,000 illegal structures have been built by the Palestinians in Area C, the portion of Judea and Samaria under full Israeli jurisdiction.

In response to repeated acts of terrorism in these areas, in 2002 the Israeli government began construction of a “separation fence” along the seam line in an attempt to prevent terrorist incursions from Judea and Samaria into the seam line zone and the Israeli population centers of the central and coastal plain that lay just beyond.

The barrier fence that encompasses Judea and Samaria, spanning some 300 km., was built over the course of nearly two decades, at a cost of NIS 8.3 billion. According to the State Comptroller’s Report of 2023, over time, and as a result of the reduction of forces in Judea and Samaria in recent years, the IDF’s ability to maintain the barrier was undermined, and Arabs sabotaged the fence to the point that many kilometers of the barrier have been demolished. In 2017, IDF Central Command decided to stop repairing damage caused by repeated sabotage. As a result, in 2021 it was possible to infiltrate cities in central Israel and the coastal plain without setting off an alarm along almost half the length of the fence; the barrier was abandoned, and all semblance of control and governance was lost. As of March 2022, thousands of illegal infiltrators continued to cross into Israel every day either by foot or in vehicles. In 2020, some 918,000 Palestinian Arabs from Judea and Samaria used the gaps in the fence in the Ephraim and Menashe regions to infiltrate Israel. In 2021, the number climbed to 1.4 million.

A LARGE illegal Palestinian home in Fire Zone 203, a buffer zone in Area C, under Israeli jurisdiction separating sovereign Israel from the West Bank (credit: Courtesy Atara Beck)

The PA takeover of the seam line

If the ineffectiveness of 50% of the barrier weren’t bad enough, the Regavim Movement’s recent mapping illustrates that the Israeli government’s policy of turning a blind eye to the Palestinian annexation of Area C has resulted in intensive illegal Palestinian construction adjacent to the seam line and the separation barrier. In the first stage, Regavim’s mapping division identified a staggering 7,675 illegal structures within 1 km. to the east or west of the seam line, and a total of 18,899 structures within 4 km. of the separation barrier.

Some of the these illegal structures are virtually adjacent to homes in Israeli communities – in such close proximity that they are literally a stone’s throw away, to say nothing of the range of any type of firearms, thus rendering whatever still exists of the security barrier useless.

Official neglect and failure to enforce jurisdiction in Area C now endangers all Israelis, and most particularly those residing in communities close to the seam line. Every single illegal structure, no matter how isolated, presents a potential threat that can no longer be ignored.

The policy of “containment and toleration” must be reversed, and proactive steps must be taken against all forms of illegal activity. It is no longer possible to ignore the illegal construction, and it is high time that we recognize it for what it is: More than the hostile takeover of Judea and Samaria’s open spaces and beyond territorial annexation, it is an immediate and undeniable threat to the security of every man, woman, and child in Israel.■

Naomi Linder Kahn is director of the International Division at Regavim, an Israel think tank dedicated to Zionist land-use policy.