Peace Now said Israel’s security cabinet approved the move “secretly” in early April, adding that the new settlements come in addition to 68 others authorized since the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu took office in 2022.

The Israeli defense ministry, which oversees settlement activity in the West Bank, declined to comment on the reports.According to Israeli media, including i24News, 10 of the newly approved sites are existing outposts previously considered illegal under Israeli law but now set to be retroactively legalized.

The remaining 24 settlements have yet to be constructed.News outlet Ynet reported that military chief Eyal Zamir warned during a security cabinet meeting on April 1 that increased operational demands, including the protection of additional settlements, could strain military capacity.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and settlements there are widely considered illegal under international law. More than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements in the territory, excluding East Jerusalem, alongside approximately three million Palestinians.

Settlement expansion has been a consistent policy across successive Israeli governments, but rights groups say approvals, land seizures and settler-related violence have accelerated since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023.

The legislation, approved earlier this week, allows for capital punishment to be applied as a default sentence for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank convicted of carrying out deadly attacks against Israelis, according to official statements and media reports.

MWL Secretary-General Mohammed Al-Issa said the measure reflects continued disregard for the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people, citing concerns over what he described as repression, racial discrimination and inhumane treatment of detainees.

Under the legal framework, Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to military courts, while Israeli citizens, including Palestinian citizens of Israel, are tried in civilian courts. Critics say the structure effectively results in unequal application of the death penalty.

The MWL expressed support for similar positions taken by foreign ministers from several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The law has added to international scrutiny of Israel’s legal and security policies in the occupied territories, particularly regarding the treatment of Palestinians within differing judicial systems.

The missile hit a hair salon in the town of Beit Awwa, southwest of Hebron, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency WAFA reported. Thirteen people were wounded, including one in serious condition.

The Israeli military said its initial assessment indicated the strike was caused by a cluster munition, a type of warhead that disperses multiple smaller bomblets over a wide area, increasing the risk to civilians.

Iran has launched daily missile attacks toward Israel since the conflict escalated at the end of February, though there have been no prior reports of it deliberately targeting Palestinian areas in the West Bank.

Unlike most Israeli cities, where bomb shelters are widely available, Palestinians in the West Bank have limited access to protective infrastructure. Many rely on sirens from nearby Israeli settlements or cities for warning of incoming attacks.

The disparity in civil defence measures has heightened risks for civilians as missile exchanges intensify across the region.Rising toll amid regional warAt least 15 people have been killed in Israel since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, triggering the current conflict.

The latest incident underscores the widening geographic and human impact of hostilities.The strike comes as streets across the West Bank have been crowded in recent days, with families preparing for Eid al-Fitr, the holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

The $24 million deal for Colt Carbine 5.56mm fully automatic rifles was officially notified to Congress by the State Department on March 6. The stated end user is the Israeli National Police.

A Controversial Deal

While the sale is relatively small compared to the billions of dollars in U.S. arms supplied to Israel, it has drawn significant attention due to previous concerns that the rifles could be used by extremist Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. The Biden administration had initially delayed the deal, citing fears that some of the weapons might end up in the hands of settlers involved in attacks on Palestinians.

Under Biden, the U.S. had imposed sanctions on individuals and entities linked to settler violence in the West Bank. However, on his first day in office on January 20, Trump rescinded those sanctions through an executive order, reversing U.S. policy. Since then, his administration has approved multiple arms sales to Israel worth billions of dollars.

The March 6 notification to Congress stated that the U.S. had considered “political, military, economic, human rights, and arms control” factors in approving the sale. However, the State Department did not confirm whether any assurances had been sought from Israel regarding how the rifles would be used.

Deepening U.S.-Israel Ties

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Middle East war, and the settlements it has built there are widely considered illegal under international law—though Israel disputes this, citing historical and biblical connections to the land.

Violence by settlers against Palestinians had already been rising before the Gaza war erupted, and it has intensified since the conflict began over a year ago.

Trump has maintained close ties with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, promising unwavering support for Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza. His administration has proceeded with multiple arms sales to Israel, even as some Democratic lawmakers have urged for pauses to review their potential impact.

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to block $8.8 billion in arms sales to Israel due to human rights concerns. Senators voted 82-15 and 83-15 against two resolutions, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders, which aimed to halt the sale of massive bombs and other offensive weapons.

Context of the Conflict

The rifle sale was initially put on hold after Democratic lawmakers demanded clarity on how Israel intended to use them. While congressional committees eventually cleared the deal, the Biden administration had kept it frozen.

The current phase of the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israeli communities, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli sources. In response, Israel has carried out a military campaign that, according to Gaza health authorities, has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians.

Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir—a far-right member of Netanyahu’s government—oversees the country’s police force. In November 2023, The Times of Israel reported that his ministry had placed “a heavy emphasis on arming civilian security squads” in the wake of the October 7 attacks.

This latest arms deal reflects the Trump administration’s continued push to support Israel militarily, despite concerns from human rights advocates and opposition from some U.S. lawmakers.

Clashes were still taking places between the Israeli army and a number of gunmen at the camp, witnesses said.

(This story has been refiled to change the source to Red Crescent from health ministry in the headline)

The Palestinian health ministry said one of its staff, a woman, was also seriously injured.

The dead 32-year-old was a senior operative with Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, according to relatives.

Israel’s military said soldiers came under fire, and shot back, during a mission to arrest suspected members of the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad faction. A gun and a dozen bombs were also captured in the operation, during which a soldier was lightly wounded, the military statement said.

Israeli forces blew up a house belonging to the dead man’s family and another bakery, according to witnesses.

Violence in the West Bank has worsened over the past 15 months with stepped-up Israeli raids, Palestinian street attacks and assaults by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages.

Israel captured the West Bank, which Palestinians hope will form the core of a future independent state, in a 1967 war. It is among territories where the Palestinians seek to establish a state.

Israel has since settled the territory, while the Palestinians are split between a Western-backed administration and armed Hamas Islamists who reject coexistence with Israel.

The spree of vandalism and arson by hundreds of settlers in several villages and towns in the occupied West Bank last month followed the June 20 killing of four Israelis by Hamas gunmen. Some of the Palestinians who lost property were U.S. dual nationals.

One defendant, in his early 30s, was among “a large number (of) rioters” who threw objects at buildings in Orif village, wrecked furniture and windows in its mosque and ripped up copies of the Koran and threw them to the floor, the indictment said.

Their goal was “to arouse fear or shock in the community through a grave blow to the sacrosanct,” it said.

The second defendant, a 22-year-old off-duty soldier, was accused separately of taking part in a mob break-in at a home in Umm Safa village while a mother and her four children were present, forcing her to hide them in a closet.

He set a patio chair alight and propped it the doorway, setting a fire that spread in the house and inflicting smoke-inhalation injuries on two of the children, the indictment said.

The Honenu law firm representing the defendants denied the charges against them. It described the first as being wrongfully targeted by Israeli authorities and the second as having been misidentified and indicted “for media and populist purposes”.

The charges – including disorderly conduct, insulting religion, aggravated arson and aggravated assault – normally carry maximum prison terms ranging between three and 20 years.

In the indictments, they were redesignated as “acts of terrorism” or “motivated by racism”. Under Israeli law, that would enable the courts to as much as double the penalty for any of the counts on which it convicts.

The indictments did not make clear what evidence will be brought. One of them appeared to have redacted the names of three prosecution witnesses, suggesting they might be confidential sources.

The limited scale and pace of Israel’s law-enforcement effort have left Palestinians unmoved, almost a decade since the stalling of U.S.-sponsored efforts to achieve their statehood goals through negotiations.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry described the settler rampages as “state-sponsored terrorism”. Israel’s hard-right government includes ministers who chafe at attributing the term terrorism to settlers.

The plans for approval of 4,560 housing units in various areas of the West Bank were included on the agenda of Israel’s Supreme Planning Council that meets next week, although only 1,332 are up for final approval, with the remainder still going through the preliminary clearance process.

“We will continue to develop the settlement of and strengthen the Israeli hold on the territory,” said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a defence portfolio that gives him a leading role in West Bank administration.

Most countries deem the settlements, built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, as illegal. Their presence is one of the fundamental issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Palestinians seek to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as their capital. Peace talks that had been brokered by the United States have been frozen since 2014.

The U.S. State Department said it was “deeply troubled” by the move, and called on Israel to return to dialogue aimed at de-escalation.

“As has been longstanding policy, the United States opposes such unilateral actions that make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve and are an obstacle to peace,” department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

Since entering office in January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition has approved the promotion of more than 7,000 new housing units, most deep in the West Bank.

It also amended a law to clear the way for settlers to return to four settlements that had previously been evacuated.

In response to Sunday’s Israeli decision, the Palestinian Authority – which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank – said it would boycott a meeting of the Joint Economic Committee with Israel scheduled for Monday.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, after Israel’s withdrawal of soldiers and settlers, condemned the move, saying it “will not give (Israel) legitimacy over our land. Our people will resist it by all means”.

Jewish settler groups welcomed the announcement.

“The people have chosen to continue building in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, and that is the way it should be,” said Shlomo Ne’eman, mayor of the Gush Etzion Regional Council and Chairman of the Yesha Council, using Israel’s biblical names for the West Bank.

The Israeli military did not immediately release details. Army Radio said hundreds of soldiers took part in the pre-dawn raid and that the three Palestinians killed were gunmen who had exchanged fire with the forces.

No armed group immediately claimed the men killed in the Balata refugee camp in the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, an area where Israeli forces have mounted frequent raids over the past year.

The chief of the Israeli military’s Central Command signed an order on Thursday that allows Israelis to enter the Homesh outpost area, paving the way for a formal settlement to be built there, the Times of Israel reported.

The State Department has repeatedly called on Israel to refrain from any moves that escalate tensions with Palestinians, like formalizing settler outposts, and specifically warned it over Homesh.

“We are deeply troubled by the Israeli government’s order that allows its citizens to establish a permanent presence in the Homesh outpost in the northern West Bank, which according to Israeli law was illegally built on private Palestinian land,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement.

The order is inconsistent with Israeli government commitments made in 2004 and more recently to Biden administration officials, Miller said.

Israel’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the order in question was intended to allow Israelis to keep attending an existing religious school in Homesh, and that the government has no intention of rebuilding the settlement or allowing Israeli presence on private Palestinian land.

The reproach by the U.S. comes after months of escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians that have tested ties between Washington and its main ally in the Middle East.

Earlier on Sunday, Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, part of a far-right government that came to power in December, visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, sacred to both Muslims and Jews, who know it as Temple Mount, and declared Israel was “in charge.”

Miller said Washington was also concerned about the “provocative visit” and “accompanying inflammatory rhetoric.”

“This holy space should not be used for political purposes, and we call on all parties to respect its sanctity,” he said, also reaffirming the U.S. position that the status quo should be maintained at Jerusalem’s holy sites.