The Israeli government has quietly moved from ambiguity to assertion in Judea and Samaria. Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the government is preparing to normalize the legal status of 140 Jewish agricultural farms that already exist across the region, but until now have operated without formal recognition. These farms are not theoretical plans or future projects. They are working agricultural communities on the ground, established over the years, producing food, guarding open land, and shaping facts that cannot be erased by diplomatic slogans.
Katz made the announcement while addressing an agricultural conference in Samaria, organized by the Benjamin Regional Council in partnership with Arutz Sheva, the Ministry of Settlements and National Missions, and the Israeli Farmers’ Association. He framed the move as both ideological and strategic. “Anyone who seeks to see Zionism at its best—what deep commitment to the Land of Israel is, and what a true connection to the soil of the land looks like—will find all of this in the agricultural farms of Judea and Samaria,” Katz said. He described the farms as a direct continuation of Zionist settlement from its earliest days and as a critical contribution to Israel’s security posture against what he explicitly termed the Palestinian enemy.
For decades, Israeli governments imposed a discriminatory policy that restricted Jewish population growth and land development in Judea and Samaria while allowing massive unauthorized Arab construction. That policy flowed directly from Israel’s long-running experiment with the disastrous “land for peace” doctrine, first formalized in the Oslo Accords of the 1990s. Its advocates, overwhelmingly left-wing and secular, sold Oslo as a diplomatic breakthrough that would end the conflict by trading land for promises.
The goal is a Two-State Solution that would create an unprecedented militarized Arab state inside Israel’s borders, ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its capital in an exclusively Muslim Jerusalem. This would require a return to the ceasefire lines drawn up after the defensive 1967 Six-Day War that are considered to be indefensible against an Arab threat.
The results are not theoretical. The Oslo process produced waves of terror, including three intifadas. It divided the heart of the Land of Israel into zones that rewarded violence with political leverage. The ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza in 2005, carried out under the same logic, directly paved the way for Hamas, a terrorist organization, to seize power and turn Gaza into a launchpad for mass murder. The October 7 massacre was not a failure of the land-for-peace idea. It was its logical outcome.
The current push to normalize Jewish farms directly challenges that failed doctrine. Katz emphasized that agricultural communities differ fundamentally from dense urban construction. A small number of farmers and shepherds control wide areas of land, creating territorial continuity and blocking illegal Arab land grabs. Pro-settlement activists have highlighted that the recent expansion in eastern Samaria establishes an unbroken Jewish presence from the Jordan Valley to the strategically vital Tapuach Junction.
“These farms are a fortified wall to safeguard our lands and strengthen our hold on our historic homeland,” Katz declared, adding that the move is being advanced with the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and in close cooperation with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. He described normalization as “another step to strengthen settlement and weaken Palestinian attempts to establish a foothold in the area.”
At a separate video address to a conference honoring these farming outposts, Katz again praised the participants as “the pioneers of our days,” stressing that they live under difficult conditions while protecting Israel’s open spaces and long-term security. He singled out Mateh Binyamin Regional Council head Israel Ganz for acting “out of a strategic vision for the security of the region against the Palestinian enemy.”
Ganz was blunt about how this process works. The regional council identifies state land, determines how it can be protected, and coordinates development on the ground. “In the end, all the pipes pass through the regional council,” he said. He added that dozens of additional communities are planned in the coming years.
Critics describe some of these farms as illegal under Israeli law because they were established without formal cabinet authorization, even when built on state land. That technical reality underscores the political nature of the issue. Government ministries, including the Settlements Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry, have funded these farms, providing security equipment and livestock subsidies. The state has acted as a partner while withholding recognition. Katz’s announcement signals an intention to end that contradiction.
Smotrich was even more explicit about the broader goal. Speaking at the same conference, he said the government is carrying out “a final elimination of the idea of the Arab state, the state of terror in the heart of the Land of Israel.” He stated plainly that this government will be remembered as the one that killed the idea of a Palestinian state and established permanent Israeli control, including formal annexation.
The political backdrop to these statements matters. The so-called Two-State Solution would require Israel to retreat to the 1949 ceasefire lines following the defensive Six-Day War of 1967, lines universally recognized by Israeli security professionals as indefensible. It would create a fully militarized Arab state inside Israel’s narrow waist, ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its capital in an exclusively Muslim Jerusalem. That vision is not mandated by Oslo.
There is also no public mandate for such a state. Recent polling among Israelis consistently shows overwhelming opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, especially after October 7. Polling among Palestinian Arabs likewise shows no majority support for peaceful coexistence within a two-state framework, with Hamas enjoying significant backing even outside Gaza. The diplomatic formula persists in elite forums, not among the populations expected to live with its consequences.
The normalization of 140 Jewish farms is not a symbolic gesture. It is a declaration that the era of self-imposed restraint rooted in Oslo is ending. After decades of terror, withdrawals, and international pressure, the Israeli government is asserting that Jewish life in Judea and Samaria is not provisional. It is permanent, rooted, and moving forward.
Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria is essential to combat illegal Palestinian construction. Illegal Palestinian Arab construction in Area C has accelerated over the past decade through a coordinated campaign backed by foreign governments, most prominently the European Union. Area C, which under the Oslo Accords remains under full Israeli civil and security control pending a negotiated resolution, has become the primary arena for a de facto land grab carried out through unauthorized building, road paving, agricultural projects, and infrastructure installation without permits. These actions are not grassroots housing initiatives. They are centrally planned, politically driven, and designed to establish irreversible facts on the ground.
The Israeli NGO Regavim has systematically documented this phenomenon through satellite imagery, field surveys, and legal filings. According to Regavim, EU-funded projects routinely appear in strategic corridors, nature reserves, and state land, often accompanied by EU flags or signage bearing the logos of European governments. These structures are built in deliberate defiance of Israeli law and planning regulations, while Israeli authorities face intense diplomatic pressure not to enforce demolition orders. Regavim has shown that this construction follows a clear pattern aimed at fragmenting Jewish territorial continuity, cutting access roads, and preempting Israeli development in key areas of Judea and Samaria.
Regavim has repeatedly warned that this foreign-funded construction campaign represents a direct violation of the Oslo Accords, which explicitly prohibit unilateral actions that alter the status of Judea and Samaria outside of bilateral negotiations. The EU’s involvement is not humanitarian neutrality but political intervention, using planning and construction as tools to advance a Palestinian state without agreement and without legal standing. While Jewish construction in Area C is tightly restricted, delayed, or frozen under international pressure, illegal Palestinian building proceeds with foreign financing and diplomatic protection. The result is a one-sided erosion of Israeli sovereignty, carried out under the language of aid while functioning as a calculated strategy to reshape the map.
