Last October, Palestinian grandmother Ayesha Shtayyeh says a man pointed a gun at her head and told her to leave the place she had called home for 50 years.
She told the BBC the armed threat was the culmination of an increasingly violent campaign of harassment and intimidation that began in 2021, after an illegal settler outpost was established close to her home in the occupied West Bank.
The number of these outposts has risen rapidly in recent years, new BBC analysis shows. There are currently at least 196 across the West Bank, and 29 were set up last year - more than in any previous year.
The outposts - which can be farms, clusters of houses, or even groups of caravans - often lack defined boundaries and are illegal under both Israeli and international law.
But the BBC World Service has seen documents showing that organisations with close ties to the Israeli government have provided money and land used to establish new illegal outposts.
The BBC has also analysed open source intelligence to examine their proliferation, and has investigated the settler who Ayesha Shtayyeh says threatened her.
Experts say outposts are able to seize large swathes of land more rapidly than settlements, and are increasingly linked to violence and harassment towards Palestinian communities.
Official figures for the number of outposts do not exist. But BBC Eye reviewed lists of them and their locations gathered by Israeli anti-settlement watchdogs Peace Now and Kerem Navot - as well as the Palestinian Authority, which runs part of the occupied West Bank.
We analysed hundreds of satellite images to verify that outposts had been constructed at these locations and to confirm the year they were set up. The BBC also checked social media posts, Israeli government publications and news sources to corroborate this and to show that outposts were still in use.
Our analysis suggests almost half (89) of the 196 outposts we verified have been built since 2019.
Four maps showing the locations of settler outposts in the occupied West Bank - verified by the BBC - in four snapshot years - 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024.
Some of these are linked to growing violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. Earlier this year, the British government sanctioned eight extremist settlers for inciting or perpetrating violence against Palestinians. At least six had established, or are living on, illegal outposts.
A former commander of the Israeli army in the West Bank, Avi Mizrahi, says most settlers are law-abiding Israeli citizens, but he does admit the existence of outposts makes violence more likely.
“Whenever you put outposts illegally in the area, it brings tensions with the Palestinians… living in the same area,” he says.
One of the extremist settlers sanctioned by the UK was Moshe Sharvit - the man Ayesha says threatened her at gunpoint. Both he and the outpost he set up less than 800m (0.5miles) from Ayesha's home, were also sanctioned by the US government in March. His outpost was described as a “base from which he perpetrates violence against Palestinians”.
“He’s made our life hell,” Ayesha says, who must now live with her son in a town close to Nablus.
A graphic of satellite imagery depicting the development of three different outposts in the West Bank. The first compares the area where Moshe Sharvit built his outpost. In May 2021, the area is an empty red-coloured ploughed field with no development. Then in June 2024, we see a number of small buildings dotted around. The second shows empty land near the Metzad settlement in Feb 2020 and then with buildings making up an outpost in July 2024. The third shows empty land near the Shim'a settlement in April 2020 and a number of buildings comprising an outpost at the same site in July 2024.
Outposts lack any official Israeli planning approval - unlike settlements, which are larger, typically urban, Jewish enclaves built throughout the West Bank, legal under Israeli law.
Both are considered illegal under international law, which forbids moving a civilian population into an occupied territory. But many settlers living in the West Bank claim that, as Jews, they have a religious and historical connection to the land.
In July, the UN’s top court, in a landmark opinion, said Israel should stop all new settlement activity and evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Israel rejected the opinion as “fundamentally wrong” and one-sided.
Despite outposts having no legal status, there is little evidence that the Israeli government has been trying to prevent their rapid growth in numbers.
The BBC has seen new evidence showing how two organisations with close ties to the Israeli state have provided money and land used to set up new outposts in the West Bank.
One is the World Zionist Organization (WZO), an international body founded more than a century ago and instrumental in the establishment of the state of Israel. It has a Settlement Division - responsible for managing large areas of the land occupied by Israel since 1967. The division is funded entirely by Israeli public funds and describes itself as an “arm of the Israeli state”.
Contracts obtained by Peace Now, and analysed by the BBC, show the Settlement Division has repeatedly allocated land on which outposts have been built. In the contracts, the WZO forbids the building of any structures and says the land should only be used for grazing or farming - but satellite imagery reveals that, in at least four cases, illegal outposts were built on it.
One of these contracts was signed by Zvi Bar Yosef in 2018. He - like Moshe Sharvit - was sanctioned by the UK and US earlier this year for violence and intimidation against Palestinians.
We contacted the WZO to ask if it was aware that multiple tracts of land it had allocated for grazing and farming were being used for the construction of illegal outposts. It did not respond. We also put questions to Zvi Bar Yosef, but received no reply.
The BBC has also uncovered two documents revealing that another key settler organisation - Amana - loaned hundreds of thousands of shekels to help establish outposts.
In one case, the organisation loaned NIS 1,000,000 ($270,000/£205,000) to a settler to build greenhouses on an outpost considered illegal under Israeli law.
Source: BBC
BDST: 1257 HRS, SEPT 03, 2024
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