Smotrich’s 40 Settlement Plan Intensifies Pressure on Israeli Palestinians

The general election on October 27 presents a stark calculation for 20 percent of Israel’s population.

While most Israeli voters choose between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former general Gadi Eisenkot’s opposition bloc, Palestinian citizens face a different set of constraints. These citizens hold the right to vote but operate within a political framework that many argue offers little prospect of reversing recent trends.

The central issue driving this hesitation is the rapid shift of the political mainstream toward the far right. This ideological move has coincided with increased violence in Palestinian communities and the physical encroachment of settlers on traditional boundaries. The expansion of policing and the militarization of civilian life have added layers of anxiety for these residents.

A concrete example of this pressure emerged in August when Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich unveiled a plan for his party. The proposal aims to add one million Jewish residents to the Naqab and northern Israel. To achieve this, the plan calls for 40 new settlements, dozens of new farms, and hundreds of thousands of new housing units. Smotrich framed the initiative as a move to extend territorial control models from the West Bank into areas where Palestinian communities are concentrated.

This expansion follows a pattern that began in 2021 in mixed cities such as Jaffa and Lydd. Religious-nationalist settler groups established themselves in Palestinian neighborhoods during that year. Since October 2023, the pace of land seizure and settlement growth has accelerated. The state has also integrated settler security squads into a broader security framework, a move that raises questions about the role of armed civilian groups in enforcing control.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has simultaneously widened access to personal firearms, issuing 300,000 gun licenses since taking office. These measures have led to the formation of a National Guard under his authority. The force’s creation was prompted by the May 2021 Dignity Uprising, which spread across towns including Lydd, Haifa, and Umm al-Fahm. Although the guard’s precise operational role is still under development, its potential use against mass protests has drawn scrutiny regarding democratic freedoms.

For many, the anti-Netanyahu bloc does not offer a clear path to policy reversal. The United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas, has long argued that joining the opposition can remove the far right from power. However, the party’s experience in the 2021 coalition government suggests otherwise. That coalition excluded Netanyahu but failed to bring about fundamental changes for Palestinian citizens. It was fragile and often divided by deep ideological contradictions.

In 2022, Mazen Ghnaim, a member of the United Arab List, publicly acknowledged the difficulty of pushing through beneficial policies while in the ruling coalition. He noted the heavy criticism he faced when visiting Palestinian communities. This experience illustrates the challenge of sustaining political participation in a government where other parties uphold exclusionary nationalist policies.

The situation is compounded by the outsourcing of brutality to criminal networks. Palestinian communities have faced killings, shootings, bombings, and arson while law enforcement has often ignored these incidents. Organised crime groups have obtained advanced weapons reportedly stolen from army stockpiles or smuggled across borders. This militarization of crime has claimed hundreds of lives.

Citizenship granted in 1952 and the lifting of martial law in 1966 did not secure substantive equality. Palestinians continue to face discriminatory laws and systemic underfunding of basic services. The state has promoted a model of the Arab Israeli as a citizen whose identity is separate from its Palestinian national context, a strategy that many argue detaches communities from their historical roots.