Khaled Yousef and Sahin Demir
14 September 2026•Update: 15 September 2026
Twenty Israeli occupier families have seized land in the Jordan Valley in the eastern occupied West Bank as Israel continues to expand illegal settlements in the Palestinian territory, according to local sources and rights groups.
Israeli forces also shot a Palestinian near Hebron and arrested a Fatah official after firing at his vehicle in Tulkarem, they said.
The occupiers moved Monday into the newly established agricultural settlement of Bitron, which was inaugurated ahead of the Jewish New Year, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.
Bitron is one of 13 settlements that Israel’s Security Cabinet approved separating from neighboring illegal settlements last year as a step toward recognizing them as independent settlements.
Channel 12 described Bitron as the first agricultural settlement established by Israel in around 20 years.
On March 23, 2025, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that the Security Cabinet had approved his proposal to separate 13 settlements in the West Bank, including Bitron, from neighboring settlements.
“Another step toward normalizing settlement,” Smotrich said at the time, adding that the 13 new settlements would be recognized as independent settlements.
Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said the decision increased the number of settlements recognized by Israel from 127 to 140 and demonstrated that the sites were not merely neighborhoods of existing settlements.
Channel 12 said the establishment of Bitron is part of an Israeli project launched after the events of Oct. 7, 2023 aimed at establishing and strengthening illegal settlements along what it considers its eastern border.
According to figures released by the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission in March 2025, 136 agricultural and pastoral outposts, mostly concentrated in the Jordan Valley and eastern slopes of the West Bank, control more than 48,000 hectares (118,610 acres) of land.
The area is around three times the total built-up area of existing Israeli settlements, according to the commission.
The UN considers Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories illegal under international law and has repeatedly warned that their expansion undermines the prospects for a two-state solution.
Separately, a Palestinian was injured Monday by Israeli army fire at the Tarqumiyah checkpoint west of Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said.
The Red Crescent said its teams treated a Palestinian who was shot in the back by Israeli forces at the checkpoint and transferred him to a hospital.
In Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, Israeli forces arrested Mohammed Ibrahim Shehadeh, secretary of the Fatah movement in Tulkarem refugee camp, after firing at his vehicle, local sources told Anadolu.
An Israeli special force intercepted Shehadeh’s vehicle in the eastern neighborhood of Tulkarem city and opened fire on it before arresting him, the sources said.
The arrest came as part of a wider Israeli campaign of raids and arrests across the occupied West Bank early Monday.
The Prisoners’ Media Office said Israeli forces raided and searched Palestinian homes, damaged the contents of some of them, assaulted residents in several areas and arrested 13 Palestinians.
In a separate development, the Al-Baidar Human Rights Organization said an Israeli occupier released his livestock near Palestinian homes in Khallat al-Hummus, south of Yatta in Hebron governorate, threatening residents’ crops and property.
In Ramallah and Al-Bireh governorate, Israeli occupiers stormed the outskirts of Deir Jarir village, east of Ramallah, the group said.
In Ni’lin, west of Ramallah, occupier bulldozers under Israeli army protection began opening roads in the Zibda area.
Al-Baidar said the roadwork came amid illegal settlement expansion and attempts to seize more Palestinian land in the area.
In Hebron governorate, the rights group said the Israeli army distributed demolition notices against several Palestinian structures in Khirbet Hamsa, west of Dura.
The occupied West Bank has witnessed escalating Israeli occupier terrorism and Israeli measures targeting Palestinians, their property and their land.