Last week, Israeli settler groups started bulldozing the lands in Beit Sahour in preparation for the recent establishment of the “Shidma” settlement outpost on the hilltop of Jabal Abu Ghneim/ Ush al-Ghurab in the town, which marks a substantial escalation in Israel’s settlement expansion and territorial consolidation in the Bethlehem district. The installation of caravans on the site in May 2025 marks the culmination of years of incremental measures aimed at transforming a former military post into a permanent civilian settlement infrastructure. Although the Israeli occupation forces evacuated the military position in 2006 following the completion of the Annexation Wall around Jerusalem, the land was never returned to its Palestinian owners, nor were confiscation orders revoked. Instead, the area remained under full Israeli control (Area C), enabling a gradual process of de facto annexation through settler presence and systematic restrictions imposed on Palestinian access to the site.
The emergence of the “Shidma” settlement must be understood as part of a broader territorial strategy designed to reshape the demographic and geographic reality between Jerusalem and the Bethlehem hinterland. The settlement is strategically located to function as a connective node between settlements in the Gush Etzion bloc, including Efrat, Tekoa, Nokdim, Har Homa (Jabal Abu Ghneim), and Ma’ale Amos, thereby extending settlement continuity deep into the eastern rural belt of Bethlehem and edging toward the Dead Sea area. Israeli planning maps reveal that the outpost aligns directly with the so-called “Eastern Ring”, a settlement corridor intended to secure uninterrupted movement for settlers between the bloc and Jerusalem, while fragmenting Palestinian territorial contiguity.
To facilitate the establishment of Shidma settlement, Israeli authorities constructed a 700-meter access road that links the outpost to surrounding settlements, justified under the pretext of “security needs.” In practice, this route creates a segregated mobility system privileging settler circulation while restricting Palestinian movement toward and around the hilltop. The road complements a network of bypass routes developed since the early 2000s, designed explicitly to reroute settler traffic around Palestinian population centers and integrate the entire eastern Bethlehem periphery into the Jerusalem settlement envelope. Through these mobility infrastructures, Shidma settlement operates not as an isolated outpost but as an infrastructural anchor in a larger system of spatial domination.
The consequences for Beit Sahour’s residents are significant and multifaceted. The seizure of the Ush al-Ghurab area resulted in the loss of approximately 100 dunums of strategic municipal land that had been earmarked for public facilities, including a children’s hospital to be built, recreational areas, cultural center, green space, and community hall, plans that had already begun implementation with donor support before settler pressure forced their suspension. Moreover, “Shidma”’s establishment further reduces the already-limited space available for Palestinian expansion: only about 7% of Beit Sahour’s administrative land remains accessible for building due to settlement encirclement and the Annexation Wall. This intensifies demographic pressure on the city, constrains urban development, exposes the town to settler violence and terror, and reinforces a coercive environment that encourages displacement of its population, mainly composed of Palestinian Christians.
Beyond its material impacts, the settlement plays a symbolic and cultural role in the ongoing effort to entrench an exclusive Zionist narrative in the area. Israeli settler groups have repeatedly invoked biblical justifications for taking over the site, despite archaeological evidence refuting such claims. These ideological assertions accompany attempts to rebrand the area as part of a “return of Jews to Bethlehem,” a rhetoric deployed to normalize settler presence and obscure the illegality of the project under international law.
The rapid conversion of Ush al-Ghurab abandoned military base into the “Shidma” outpost must therefore be viewed as a deliberate component of a sustained colonization project and alarming process with the E1 plan. Its geographic positioning within the wider Gush Etzion–Jerusalem corridor, combined with the supporting infrastructure of bypass roads and mobility restrictions, indicates a coordinated effort to entrench settlement contiguity while tightening the enclosure of Palestinian communities. The outpost’s establishment exacerbates territorial fragmentation, curtails Palestinian freedom of movement, facilitates demographic engineering, and deepens the structural environment of dispossession. This development represents not only a local threat to Beit Sahour’s land and growth but also a broader assault on the integrity of the Bethlehem governorate and the viability of Palestinian territorial continuity.
Under international humanitarian law, the establishment of “Shidma” constitutes a clear violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of the occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory and forbids the expropriation of land unless strictly required for military necessity. Given that the military base was dismantled in 2006 and no ongoing military use exists, Israel’s retention and transformation of the area serve exclusively civilian settlement purposes, amounting to unlawful appropriation of occupied land. The outpost further contributes to the creation of irreversible facts on the ground, undermining the right of the Palestinian population to self-determination and violating obligations of the occupying power to protect property and ensure public order and civil life.
Moreover, the July 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of Israel’s Policies and Practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory affirmed that Israel’s continued presence in the oPt is unlawful due to its prolonged, systematic violations of peremptory norms, including the prohibition on acquisition of territory by force and the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. In this context, the establishment and expansion of the “Shidma” outpost are not isolated violations but form part of an unlawful territorial regime that the ICJ found incompatible with international law. By entrenching and expanding civilian settlements on confiscated Palestinian land Israel both deepens the illegality identified by the Court and exacerbates its obligations of cessation and non-recognition. The Shidma outpost therefore reinforces an internationally unlawful situation that third States are required not to recognize and must act to bring to an end.