Israeli settlers are celebrating the inauguration of a new settlement in the West Bank on land where Israel and the U.S. once hoped to build a hospital for Palestinian children. The new settlement is called Yatziv and it was inaugurated on Monday at a ceremony attended by key settler leaders, including Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. To settlers, the site is emblematic of how far their movement has come and how emboldened they are now under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government and with President Donald Trump in office. Palestinians nearby say the land was originally theirs and the ever-expanding construction hems them in and makes it nearly impossible to establish a viable independent state.

Health officials in the Gaza Strip say that more than 64,000 have been killed in the nearly two-year war. Hamas and Israel meanwhile reiterated their incompatible demands for ending the fighting sparked by the militant group's attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Local hospitals said Thursday that Israeli strikes killed 28 people overnight. Israel is pressing ahead with its planned offensive in famine-stricken Gaza City. In the occupied West Bank, Israelis established a new settlement in a Palestinian city, according to an anti-settlement monitoring group.

Israel says it will authorize 22 Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. They would include new settlements and the legalization of outposts already built without government authorization. Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least 34 people overnight, with one strike on a home in central Gaza killing 22 people. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians want it to be the main part of their future state. Most of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to resolving the decades-old conflict. Defense Minister Israel Katz said the settlement decision was "a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel."

A groups that monitors settlements in the West Bank says Israel has budgeted millions of dollars to protect and support the growth of small, unofficial Jewish farms in the Israeli-occupied territory. Documents uncovered by Peace Now illustrate how Israel's pro-settler government has quietly poured money into the unauthorized outposts, some of which have been linked to violence against Palestinians and have been sanctioned by the U.S. The Ministry of Settlements and National Mission, which is headed by a far-right settler leader, has confirmed it budgeted over $20 million last year for security equipment for unauthorized Jewish farms and outposts. The money was quietly authorized in December while the country's attention was focused on the war against Hamas.

A settlement tracking group says Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades. Peace Now said Wednesday that authorities recently approved the appropriation of nearly 5 square miles of land in the Jordan Valley. The group's data indicate it is the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo accords at the start of the peace process. The Palestinians view the expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank as the main barrier to any lasting peace agreement and most of the international community views them as illegitimate. Israel's government considers the West Bank to be the historical and religious heartland of the Jewish people and is opposed to Palestinian statehood.