GENEVA: Israel has expanded and consolidated settlements in the occupied West Bank as part of the steady integration of these territories into the State of Israel, in breach of international law, the UN human rights office said in a report on Tuesday.

The report, based on research between Nov. 1, 2023, and Oct. 31, 2024, said there had been a “significant” expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and cited reports by Israeli NGOs of tens of thousands of planned housing units in new or existing settlements.

The findings will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council this month and come amid growing fears of annexation among Palestinians, as US policy shifts under President Donald Trump and new settler outposts are put down in areas of the West Bank seen as part of a future Palestinian state.

“The transfer by Israel of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies amounts to a war crime,” UN High Commissioner Volker Turk said in a statement accompanying the report, urging the international community to take meaningful action.

“Israel must immediately and completely cease all settlement activities and evacuate all settlers, stop the forcible transfer of the Palestinian population, and prevent and punish attacks by its security forces and settlers,” he said.

Around 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, land Israel captured in 1967. Most countries consider Israel’s settlements on territory seized in war to be illegal. 

Israel’s military says it is conducting counter-terrorism operations in the West Bank and targeting suspected militants.

Plans for the further provision of Israeli government services in these settlements “further institutionalize(s) long-standing patterns of systematic discrimination, segregation, oppression, domination, violence and other inhumane acts against the Palestinian people,” the report said.