Ministers advanced the approval of 34 new settlements in the West Bank at a Cabinet meeting last month, even as IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir warned about serious manpower strains in the army, ynet learned on Thursday.
Zamir told the meeting he was “raising 10 red flags” over the IDF’s manpower levels, arguing that the military would need additional personnel to meet its expanding operational demands, including those stemming from settlement expansion.
During the discussion, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir objected that the list of settlements did not include the wildcat outpost of Yishuv Hadaat, where his chief of staff, Hanamel Dorfman, lives.
Officials familiar with the matter said that the outpost had not initially been included on the list due to legal hurdles.
Ben-Gvir argued that this was not the first time the settlement had been left off. The settlement was ultimately added to the list of approved communities after Defense Minister Israel Katz backed Ben-Gvir’s position.
The settlement approval plan is part of a broader move being advanced by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich together with Katz to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank and reshape the reality on the ground there.
According to two officials familiar with the matter, the approval of the new settlements was kept under wraps during the war at the request of the United States.
The newly approved settlements are scattered across the West Bank, including in northern Samaria, an area from which Jewish settlers were evacuated under the 2005 disengagement plan.