Is­rael said Thurs­day it would es­tab­lish 22 Jew­ish set­tle­ments in the oc­cu­pied West Bank, in­clud­ing the le­gal­iza­tion of out­posts al­ready built with­out gov­ern­ment au­tho­riza­tion.

Is­raeli strikes on the Gaza Strip mean­while killed at least 13 peo­ple overnight, lo­cal health of­fi­cials said.

Is­rael cap­tured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war and the Pales­tini­ans want all three ter­ri­to­ries for 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 “strength­ens our hold on Judea and Samaria,” us­ing the bib­li­cal term for the West Bank, “an­chors our his­tor­i­cal right in the Land of Is­rael, and con­sti­tutes a crush­ing re­sponse to Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ism.”

He added it was al­so “a strate­gic move that pre­vents the es­tab­lish­ment of a Pales­tin­ian state that would en­dan­ger Is­rael.”

Is­rael has al­ready built well over 100 set­tle­ments across the ter­ri­to­ry that are home to some 500,000 set­tlers. The set­tle­ments range from small hill­top out­posts to ful­ly de­vel­oped com­mu­ni­ties with apart­ment blocks, shop­ping malls, fac­to­ries and pub­lic parks.

The West Bank is home to 3 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans, who live un­der Is­raeli mil­i­tary rule with the West­ern-backed Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty ad­min­is­ter­ing pop­u­la­tion cen­ters. The set­tlers have Is­raeli cit­i­zen­ship.

Is­rael has ac­cel­er­at­ed set­tle­ment con­struc­tion in re­cent years — long be­fore Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, at­tack ig­nit­ed the war in Gaza — con­fin­ing Pales­tini­ans to small­er and small­er ar­eas of the West Bank and mak­ing the prospect of es­tab­lish­ing a vi­able, in­de­pen­dent state even more re­mote.

Dur­ing his first term, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion broke with decades of U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy by sup­port­ing Is­rael’s claims to ter­ri­to­ry seized by force and tak­ing steps to le­git­imize the set­tle­ments. For­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, like most of his pre­de­ces­sors, op­posed the set­tle­ments but ap­plied lit­tle pres­sure to Is­rael to curb their growth.

The top Unit­ed Na­tions court ruled last year that Is­rael’s pres­ence in the oc­cu­pied Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries is un­law­ful and called on it to end, and for set­tle­ment con­struc­tion to stop im­me­di­ate­ly. Is­rael de­nounced the non-bind­ing opin­ion by a 15-judge pan­el of the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice, say­ing the ter­ri­to­ries are part of the his­toric home­land of the Jew­ish peo­ple.

Calls for set­tle­ments in war-rav­aged Gaza

Is­rael with­drew its set­tle­ments from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but lead­ing fig­ures in the cur­rent gov­ern­ment have called for them to be re-es­tab­lished and for much of the Pales­tin­ian pop­u­la­tion of the ter­ri­to­ry to be re­set­tled else­where through what they de­scribe as vol­un­tary em­i­gra­tion.

Pales­tini­ans view such plans as a blue­print for their forcible ex­pul­sion from their home­land, and ex­perts say the plans would like­ly vi­o­late in­ter­na­tion­al law.

Is­rael now con­trols more than 70% of Gaza, ac­cord­ing to Yaakov Garb, a pro­fes­sor of en­vi­ron­men­tal stud­ies at Ben Gu­ri­on Uni­ver­si­ty, who has ex­am­ined Is­raeli-Pales­tin­ian land use pat­terns for decades.

The area in­cludes buffer zones along the bor­der with Is­rael as well as the south­ern city of Rafah, which is now most­ly un­in­hab­it­ed, and oth­er large ar­eas that Is­rael has or­dered to be evac­u­at­ed.

The war be­gan with Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack, in which mil­i­tants stormed in­to Is­rael, killing some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and ab­duct­ing 251. Hamas still holds 58 hostages, around a third of them alive, af­ter most of the rest were re­leased in cease­fire agree­ments. Is­raeli forces have res­cued eight and re­cov­ered dozens of bod­ies.

Is­rael’s re­tal­ia­to­ry of­fen­sive has killed over 54,000 Pales­tini­ans, most­ly women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to Gaza’s Health Min­istry, which does not say how many of the dead were civil­ians or com­bat­ants.

Is­raeli strikes killed at least 13 Pales­tini­ans overnight in Gaza, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal hos­pi­tals.

Four were killed in a strike on a car in Gaza City late Wednes­day and an­oth­er eight, in­clud­ing two women and three chil­dren, were killed in a strike on a home in Ja­baliya. A strike on a built-up refugee camp in cen­tral Gaza killed one per­son and wound­ed 18.

There was no im­me­di­ate com­ment from the Is­raeli mil­i­tary, which says it on­ly tar­gets mil­i­tants and blames civil­ian deaths on Hamas be­cause the mil­i­tants are em­bed­ded in pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas.

Melz­er re­port­ed from Na­hariya, Is­rael. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Ka­reem Chehayeb in Beirut con­tributed.

By JU­LIA FRANKEL and NA­TAL­IE MELZ­ER

JERUSALEM (AP)