ISRAEL’S Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman believes he has found the surefire way to stop attacks on Israeli citizens in the occupied West Bank: expand its settlements. As such, he has announced that 400 new homes would be built in the settlement of Adam, near Ramallah, where a Palestinian fatally stabbed an Israeli man on Thursday. The Israeli army said it was reinforcing its defenses in Adam but Lieberman wants to go one better by suggesting his longer-term strategy of expansion.

Since the 1967 war, Israel has built more than 200 settlements on Palestinian-inhabited territory, housing more than 600,000 Jews and shrugging off pressure from the international community that considers them illegal.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken advantage of his love fest with the administration of US President Donald Trump to construct many settlement units on vast swathes of the Palestinian-controlled Zone C, a pace much faster than that during Barack Obama’s tenure. Daily encroachment by Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and its suburbs pave the way for connecting larger settlements surrounding East Jerusalem, making Palestinian areas isolated islands in a large sea of Jewish-only districts. Israel has managed to increase settlement populations, build more settlements and establish new settlement loci, all of which have transformed the demographic conditions of the occupied territories.

Netanyahu generally announces new construction in the West Bank after attacks against Israeli settlers. He and Lieberman have approved construction of hundreds of housing units as a salve to the settlers. Palestinian territories are under an unprecedented and intense rate of settlement construction amid public pride by key members of the right-wing government, which competes over who supports settlements more.

Escalation is in the form of constructing more settlement roads, and new settlements marketed as part of existing settlements. The scale of the settlement program of the Netanyahu government is also far greater than what is sporadically reported in the Israeli media.

Lieberman’s claim that West Bank settlements are necessary for Israel’s defense is not new; he came up with the theory last year, promising to complete a plan to protect all settlements with smart fences and better access roads. As foreign minister four years ago, Lieberman told his German counterpart point-blank that Israel would not stop building homes for Jews in East Jerusalem.

The UN considers settlements illegal and has referred to them as “a flagrant violation under international law” and a major obstacle to peace that must be halted and reversed. But Netanyahu has rejected calls to withdraw from the West Bank. “We are here to stay, forever,” he said last year. And despite Trump advising Netanyahu to “hold off on settlements for a bit”, Israel has progressed even faster with its construction program.

Israel’s persistent engagement in settlement activities has been universally condemned and is illegal under international law. Yet, last week, Israeli lawmakers passed a law which describes building settlements as “a national value” and pledges to “encourage and promote” it. Israel’s policy of settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories has long been understood as aiming to change realities on the ground and impose a fait accompli. Israel’s campaign has always been about the irreversible conquest of Palestinian land.

Lieberman, who himself lives in a settlement, and his supporters are ideologically committed to Israel’s military occupation of land that Palestinians want for their future state. Lieberman sees settlement activities not just as a security gain but as an ideological duty. He is among the three or four Israelis who have had the greatest role in the establishment and expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories from 1967 on. But there is an essential contradiction between settlement expansion and peace. If Lieberman wants Palestinian attacks on Israelis to stop, then Israel should stop settlement growth and above all, end its occupation.