The security cabinet has approved a decision to split off 13 so-called “neighborhoods” of existing West Bank settlements from their “mother settlement,” thereby turning them into 13 independent settlements.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who advanced the security cabinet’s decision in his additional role as a minister in the Defense Ministry, described the move on Sunday as an important step to the path of “de facto [Israeli] sovereignty” over the West Bank.

The “neighborhoods” in question were built many years, and even decades, ago, as illegal settlement outposts, that is, without formal cabinet approval.

Some of these outposts were retroactively legalized by the government by way of approving building plans for the construction of a new neighborhood for an authorized and legal settlement at the site of the illegal outpost, even when, as in many cases, that outpost was several kilometers from the original settlement.

This was all done at a time when Israel was cautious about the diplomatic consequences of settlement expansion, and therefore built the so-called settlements as “neighborhoods” to disguise the reality of settlement expansion.

The decision to now formally split off the neighborhoods as new settlements allows the government to provide budgets for each of them individually, as opposed to designating money for it through its old mother settlements. They will also all get their own municipal councils.

The new settlements were Alon, Haresha, Kerem Reim, Neriya, Migron, Shvut Rachel, Ovnat,........

© The Times of Israel