Channel 7 reported that trucks carrying equipment arrived at the site and that the first occupier families from the settlement’s founding group moved into buildings erected there.
The move came ahead of an official inauguration ceremony scheduled for Sunday, with Israeli cabinet ministers, Knesset members and other public figures expected to attend.
The illegal settlement was established as part of a broader plan led by the Zionist regime’s Samaria Regional Council to establish 19 new illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“This is the fifth settlement established by the Samaria Regional Council in less than a year,” the channel said.
According to daily Israel Hayom, Emek Dotan is the first illegal settlement in the northern West Bank to be established on a site where no settlement existed before Israel’s 2005 disengagement plan.
Meanwhile, the Zionist regime has occupied the West Bank, including East Al-Quds, since the 1967 war.
The UN and most of the international community consider Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory illegal under international law and view their expansion as an obstacle to a two-state solution.
Palestinians consider the Israeli regime’s illegal settlement expansion part of a broader policy of land seizure and territorial fragmentation in the occupied West Bank.
UN Security Council Resolution 2334, issued in 2016, states that Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Al-Quds, have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation of international law.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice said in an advisory opinion that Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end as soon as possible.