How two Israeli brothers are driving a West Bank settler land grab

From a hilltop sprawl of industrial buildings, a family of Israeli settlers is cranking out prefabricated buildings to accelerate the expansion of illegal Jewish outposts in the occupied West Bank, driving Palestinians from their homes.

Libi Construction and Infrastructure, owned by brothers Eliav and Harel 'Coco' Libi, is building a new factory to produce the simple white structures they and others install in outposts, Eliav Libi said in an April social-media post. Seen one recent day from a nearby road, the company's compound had at least five warehouses, flanked by rows of prefabricated houses and stacks of building material. Excavators worked to expand the site, which is in the settlement of Shilo.

The Libi operation reflects a growing settlement strategy to claim expanses of West Bank land quickly and cheaply. Instead of building modern complexes and neighbourhoods, with Israeli government permits, these outposts often start with one or two prefabricated houses and no legal approval. They're occupied by young Israeli herders who bring livestock to graze land used by Palestinian shepherds and farmers.

All Israeli settlements are widely condemned by the United Nations and many European countries, among others. Outposts like those founded by the Libis are illegal even under Israeli law, which requires advance approval to build in areas of the West Bank under Israeli administrative control. Yet the brothers receive broad Israeli government support as they race to expand – part of a larger West Bank settlement surge since the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing Gaza war.

The Libis in that time helped found at least nine new farming outposts, according to a Reuters examination of their sprawling operations. Overall, Israeli settlers built 184 unauthorised West Bank outposts in the three years ending with 2025, almost as many as during the past three decades, according to Peace Now, an anti-settlement Israeli human rights group. Israel's government does not regularly publish outpost data. But government officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, publicly cite numbers only slightly lower than the Peace Now tally.

Both Peace Now and the West Bank Palestinian government say there are now about 410 total outposts. Last year alone, settlers founded 86 outposts, says Peace Now, which monitors settlements with an on-the-ground verification team. Reuters corroborated a sample of 30 such outposts through visits and satellite imagery.

Taken together, these outposts cover nearly a fifth of West Bank territory, almost all of it seized in the four years since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's current government took office, according to a joint report by Peace Now and fellow Israeli rights group Kerem Navot. Settlers give a similar figure of around 1,000 square kilometres.

The Libis are among the highest-profile figures in a hardline settler movement that uses livestock, crops, fences - and sometimes violence - to expand Israel's West Bank footprint. Eliav Libi in particular has helped push political and military leaders to embrace outposts as a strategy to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state that they say would present a security risk to Israel.

Deadly settler attacks against Palestinians are surging as outposts proliferate, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). At least 16 Palestinians were killed in Israeli settler attacks last year, and more than 1,100 were injured, a record, OCHA data shows. Attacks have further escalated this year, with 23 Palestinians killed and more than 1,000 injured through August. By comparison, this year Palestinians have killed 1 settler and injured 22 settlers, the data shows.

Israeli forces routinely shield the violence, for instance by accompanying settlers on attacks of Palestinian villages, a UN inquiry said in June.

Israel's government has given the Libis a licence for the new factory, grazing permits and an agricultural grant, Reuters found, part of what Peace Now has said is about $1 million in agricultural ministry funding approved for outposts. Another $1.3 million in government funds has been approved for an organisation with previously undisclosed close ties to the Libis, the reporting shows. The Israeli Defense Ministry hired the Libis for work including the demolition of Palestinian houses in war-ravaged Gaza, according to government statements and a brief interview with Harel Libi.

Cabinet ministers, including Defense Minister Israel Katz, have met with Eliav Libi and his associates to discuss their work and plans. The government has already recognised at least three outposts the Libis built, including one established last year, meaning they can be developed into larger settlements.

Over the past two years, senior Israeli military leaders have publicly supported and coordinated with an association of hardline settlers, of which Eliav Libi is a prominent member,as it established dozens of farm outposts, according to a senior member of a settler group that coordinates with the military, videos of military leaders' comments to settler conferences and Libi's comments to pro-settler media outlets.

The Libis declined to comment for this story beyond Harel Libi's confirmation of their defence contracting. "We work for them in all kinds of military places and bases," he said.

Libi Construction and Infrastructure responded to detailed questions from Reuters with a statement saying the reporting for this story was based on "false claims" intended to "promote a radical political agenda that serves elements who seek to expand the cycle of violence and conflict." The company said it operates "according to law and equally towards every religion, race and gender."

In an August podcast, Eliav Libi said the company avoids hiring Palestinians, describing them as "the enemy."

The military denied formal relations with the brothers. The Defense Ministry declined to comment. A military official said the army coordinated with unregulated West Bank farm outposts to safeguard their security "and that of the surrounding area." The military said its soldiers were also obliged to stop attacks on Palestinians or their property.

Tzvi Sukkot, a member of parliament for the Religious Zionism party within Netanyahu's coalition, praised young West Bank settlers and called Eliav Libi "one of the great builders" of Israel.

"If there are incidents of violence, they should be dealt with. That's what the police are for. That's what the army is for," said Sukkot, who in August took a sledge hammer to a Palestinian war memorial in the West Bank.

The offices of Netanyahu and Defense Minister Katz did not answer questions for this story.

Speaking in the West Bank in August, Netanyahu said farm outposts were "preparing the ground for a very great immigration," of Israelis to the West Bank, without elaborating. He said 160 new farm outposts had been built, adding "more are on the way."

Senior Palestinian official Wasel Abu Yousef said settlement expansion aimed to "hinder the establishment of an independent and geographically contiguous Palestinian state."

Centuries-old village, surrounded

To understand the Libis' operations and government connections, Reuters reviewed the brothers' public comments and previously unreported government records showing financial support for them; interviewed two settlers who know the Libis and Israeli peace activists who monitor illegal outposts; and visited Palestinian villagers who described violence by settlers from outposts the brothers helped establish.

Eliav Libi "spreads fear," said Suleiman Dawabsheh, the head of the council in Duma, a Palestinian village a few miles from the Libi factory in Shilo. Libi, he said, calls "for the displacement of citizens and the seizure of their lands."

Overlooking the Jordan Valley, centuries-old Duma is now surrounded by outposts the Libis established. Eliav Libi has spoken extensively about using outposts to expel Palestinians from the West Bank, including on a podcast in August.

At least 434 people, mainly semi-nomadic Bedouin herders, have fled areas near outposts associated with the Libis since 2022, according to a Reuters tally of displacement data gathered by B'Tselem, an Israeli human-rights organisation that opposes settlements.

Most of Israel's Western allies view settlers like the Libis as a destabilising force undermining Middle East peace efforts. In May and June, the Libis were hit with coordinated sanctions by Australia, Canada, France, Norway and the United Kingdom, who accuse them of illegally seizing land and facilitating settler violence.

Last year, the United Kingdom sanctioned Harel Libi and imposed an asset freeze on an outpost he established, Coco's Farm, prohibiting UK financial institutions from transactions involving funds held by the outpost or its settlers. The UK accused Libi himself of "acts of aggression and violence against Palestinian people," without specifying the alleged violence or why it sanctioned Coco's Farm in particular.

The United States levied sanctions on extremist settlers under President Joe Biden but lifted them under his successor, Donald Trump, who has strongly supported Netanyahu's government and settlements. The Trump Administration has also softened the longstanding US position that settlements are inconsistent with international law.

Under pressure from Washington after settler attacks on Palestinian-Americans, Netanyahu ordered the demolition of some outposts, Israeli sources told Reuters on 7 September. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich later said he believed the action would be limited to a handful of sites in Palestinians administered areas of the West Bank.

The settlers fashion themselves as pioneers staking out territory they call unused, despite the presence of Palestinian herders and farmers. As the Libi company website puts it: "We receive the mountain virgin and raw and return it to the client as a complete, developed neighbourhood, connected to infrastructure and flourishing….All that remains is to populate the houses."

The Libis maintain their close Israeli government connections despite documented intimidation and violence, including killings and arsons, involving outposts they have helped set up. The Libis have not been directly implicated in killings or arsons.

Eliav Libi participated in an intimidation campaign earlier this year against the al-Abayyat family of Bedouin shepherds living near an illegal outpost he established, called Mitzpe Michal, close to Fasayill in the Jordan Valley. Libi and associates, sometimes bearing firearms, brought cattle to graze in the family's garden, dumped tonnes of rotting dates against their house as cattle feed, played loud music from passing vehicles and drones, and cut water and electric connections, according to interviews with the herder and two eyewitnesses, along with videos from the Israeli anti-settlement activist group Looking the Occupation in the Eye, which Reuters verified.

In March, an excavator demolished the al-Abayyat family's home. The videos showed Israeli soldiers watching the destruction. In response to a Reuters question, the military said the buildings were constructed illegally and demolished by Israeli authorities with soldiers providing security.

In total, six families left the area under duress, according to B'tselem.

'Practical sovereignty' over the West Bank

Harel and Eliav Libi grew up in the West Bank, where their father Yaakov Libi is a settler. He declined an interview.

The brothers have founded outposts since at least 2009, when they established an illegal hilltop farm near the Adei Ad outpost, where they lived at the time.

In 2012, the Israeli military temporarily banned Harel Libi from the West Bank and shortly after demolished the farm, according to a military statement and media reports at the time. Libi was among 12 "Jewish extremists" the military said were involved in "leading, directing and executing violent and clandestine activity targeting Palestinian residents" and Israeli security forces in the West Bank.

In 2015, a settler from Adei Ad killed a Palestinian couple and their toddler in an arson attack on their Duma home. The settler was later convicted of murder and received three consecutive life sentences.

Israel has since legalised Adei Ad.

Today, the Libi brothers control what one settler who knows them called a West Bank "empire," with activities ranging from quarrying sand and manufacturing cement to building roads and settlements, along with expanding their own farms.

The family operates on the ground level of a strategy that far-right, religious-nationalist Finance Minister Smotrich says aims to "bury" the idea of Palestinian statehood.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Most of the world ​considers all Israeli settlements illegal under international laws governing military occupation.

Israel disputes this, citing historical, biblical and political links to the West Bank. But Israel has historically distinguished between legal settlements, approved in advance through an extensive process, and illegal outposts.

The government has often blurred that distinction by protecting outposts, but its increasingly open embrace of them is unprecedented. Last year, almost half the 54 settlements approved by the Israeli government were existing outposts with no previous approval, Peace Now says.

Netanyahu returned to office in 2022, after an 18-month stint as opposition leader. Since then, his government has almost doubled the number of West Bank settlements granted legal status to 231, according to Peace Now, including ones that started as outposts.

Israel's political right, including Netanyahu, has sought to annex the West Bank but met opposition in Washington after Trump's regional partners in the Middle East, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, strongly lobbied the US against the move.

In the absence of US support, rapid settlement can achieve de facto annexation, officials including Smotrich have said. In June, he described the strategy as imposing "practical sovereignty" over the West Bank as settlements systematically absorb the region into Israel.

A Reuters review of the Libis' social-media statements and public interviews shows they have regular contact with senior officials, including Smotrich and Netanyahu's Minister for Settlements, Orit Strook. Eliav Libi hosted Strook in April during her visit to newly established outposts, bordering the Jordan Valley, where Libi said friends of his lived.

Strook didn't respond to a comment request.

In August, Defense Minister Israel Katz met Eliav Libi at the ministry, with Libi outlining a proposal to build settlements in Palestinian-administered West Bank areas, two Israeli officials told Reuters. Speaking by video to one illegal outpost in February, Katz said he was working, with Netanyahu's support, on the "regularisation" of dozens of farm outposts.

The military official who answered questions from Reuters said regularisation meant the government sought to create a new regulatory framework for the illegal outposts "subject to strict conditions and security coordination."

In an April social-media post, Libi praised Netanyahu's ministers including Katz for a "historic breakthrough" in Israel's approach to outposts.

Claiming land with livestock

Eliav Libi believes the Bible gives Jewish people the right to live in the West Bank. In May, he told a settlers conference that Israeli farmer-settlers are fulfilling Isiah's prophecy, which states that part of the Jordan Valley will become a "resting place for herds, for my people who seek me."

"We are seeing the early buds of this prophecy beginning to happen," Libi said, describing Jewish cattle and sheep herders in the area, according to a video of the event published online.

The Libis have restricted Palestinian access to an area about the size of Paris around the fertile Jordan Valley, according to Eliav Libi's own public statements and a tally by Israeli activist Dror Etkes, the Israeli founder of human rights group Kerem Navot, who documents and opposes settlement growth.

They are using livestock, fences and roads, along with intimidation, to stake claims on about 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres), according to Etkes. The outposts lie mainly between the villages of Duma, Al-Mughayir and Fasayill.

Government records show the brothers have been granted herding permits and state funding. In 2025 the Libis' firm received a small agriculture-ministry grant and grazing permission from the Israeli Land Authority for areas around Fasayil. Additionally, between 2021 and 2025, the Libis' company and two of their settlements received a total of 168,586 shekels ($56,000 dollars) in agriculture-ministry funding, with another 107,357 shekels ($36,000) approved for this year, public records show.

The ministry did not respond to a comment request.

Along with government and military support, Libi Construction and Infrastructure has also collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations through online fundraising, according to publicly accessible crowdfunding websites.

At the May settler conference, Libi acknowledged operating on the fringe of Israeli law, telling the audience "sometimes we push from below" going "a few steps beyond" actions formally authorised by authorities. Settlements are not inherently linked to violence, he said. But in practice, settling in areas where Palestinians live means "friction."

Frictions erupted in 2024 at the Malachei Hashalom settlement, after 14-year-old settler Benjamin Achimeir was beaten and stabbed to death while herding sheep. The outpost, founded by Eliav Libi in 2015, was retroactively recognised by Israel in 2023 and fully legalised this year. In media interviews, Libi has described it as his home, although he and his family regularly move on to new outposts.

Israeli investigators charged a 21-year-old Duma resident, Ahmed Dawabsheh, with Achimeir's murder, saying he was inspired by Islamic State. Reuters could not establish how Dawabsheh pleaded or the current case status.

The killing sparked a rampage of settler revenge attacks through several Palestinian villages including Duma in which four Palestinians were killed, including a child, the UN and Amnesty International said at the time. Some were shot. Dozens of homes were burned. The military detained six settlers after the attacks but they were released within a few months without charge. Separately, in 2025, Defense Minister Katz released all settlers from military detention.

Similar broad-based revenge attacks are a common response to violence against Israelis by Palestinians in the West Bank, with the words "price tag" often scrawled by settlers on Palestinian property, emphasising the price being exacted on Palestinians.

After Duma, getting organised

The Duma attacks led to the creation of the Farms Association, whose board includes Eliav Libi and other hardliners subject to international sanctions. "Following the Duma incident, farmers, together with senior military figures, initiated the development of educational farms," the group says on its website. The association wants to provide young settlers with "structure, agricultural responsibility, and renewed trust in state institutions" while encouraging their military service.

The group says the government recognises the "strategic importance" of farm outposts and supports them through infrastructure, fencing, security and agricultural grants. It notes farms are much cheaper than traditional permitted settlements, "while securing large areas of land."

One settler with an organisation that coordinates settlement activity with the army told Reuters the military previously viewed such outposts as "a pain in the ass" that squandered time and resources. That attitude changed after the 7 October 2023 attacks. The army started instructing settlers where to put farms, seeing them as a tool to keep Palestinians away from Israeli West Bank populations, the settler said.

"It became a solution," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The United Kingdom imposed sanctions on the Libis and the Farms Association in June, condemning the group for providing financial and logistical support for settlers associated with violence and forced displacement of Palestinians. It also put sanctions on a group called Ahavat Gilad, which it said channelled donations to the settler outposts. The Farms Association website states that it's operated and managed by Ahavat Gilad.

On 2 August, Israel's National Security Ministry agreed to a joint project with Ahavat Gilad that it said aims to reduce violence by young Israeli settlers, according to a procurement document on Israel's Government Procurement Administration website. The ministry will provide up to 8 million shekels ($2.6 million) for the effort over three years, with half the money going to Ahavat Gilad, according to the document.

The address listed for Ahavat Gilad in Israel's registry of non-profit organisations is a property linked to the Libis' father, Yaakov Libi, in Shilo.

The elder Libi joined Ahavat Gilad after the Duma violence and led the organisation as CEO from 2025 until earlier this year, during a time the group reported a dramatic increase in donations and employed several staff, according to Justice Ministry documents requested by Kerem Navot and seen by Reuters. Libi remains a board member.

On a visit to Shilo in August, a Reuters reporter briefly talked to the current CEO of Ahavat Gilad, Netanyal Bokaya, on the phone and at the Libis' factory.

"We are patriots, we trust the army and the government," Bokaya said of the government funding. In a statement to Reuters, Ahavat Gilad said it "promotes educational and charitable activities, assistance to the needy and legal settlement."

The National Security Ministry said in a statement that it chose to finance Ahavat Gilad because of its "measurable and significant results in leading youth toward positive activities, preventing violence, encouraging enlistment in the military, and more." The ministry said the sanctions against Ahavat Gilad reflected an anti-Israel agenda.

The Libis and Netanyahu's office did not respond to a request for comment about the funding. Britain's Foreign Office said in a statement settler violence and expansion of illegal settlements "seriously undermine the prospects for a two-state solution."

On 16 July, senior security officials including Israel's Central Command military leader Avi Bluth, who oversees West Bank operations, addressed the inaugural Farms Association security conference at an outpost near Jerusalem.

Bluth told the audience of a "huge change" in the military perception of the farms over the previous two years, with those that coordinated with the army now seen as positive for security.

"I believe in the people here very much," he said, according to event footage distributed by the Farms Association. "I appreciate what you do."

In May, Bluth showed reporters a slide that said 160 farms had been established in coordination with the military.

In his speech at the February settler event, Defense Minister Katz described the outposts as a fortified wall "strengthening our hold on our historic homeland," according to a video of his address.

The Farms Association, Bluth and Katz did not respond to requests for comment. The military and the government didn't answer questions about their ties to the Farms Association.

Bulldozing Gaza, avenging a son's death

Last year, the Libis' company supplied excavators, bulldozers and drivers to the military in Gaza, according to Eliav Libi and a government statement. At the time, the military was hiring civilian contractors to demolish thousands of Palestinian homes in Gaza.

Human rights groups say the systematic destruction of civilian property violated the rules of war. Israel's military argues it was justified to clear booby-traps and enable ground offensives.

Eliav Libi was among the bulldozer operators, he told the May settler conference, as was his 19-year-old son, David Libi. On 29 May 2025, David Libi was killed by an explosion while operating heavy machinery in Gaza, according to the government statement. Hamas later said it attacked the machine with an explosive device. Israeli cabinet ministers attended Libi's funeral.

After his son's death, Eliav Libi started expanding outposts more rapidly, he said in an April 2026 social-media post.

Settlers' harassment and attacks on Duma and nearby herding communities have become more frequent since the construction of one of those outposts, Giborei David, according to three villagers.

In August, 35-year-old Palestinian Thameen Dawabsheh was fatally shot by an off-duty soldier during a protest outside Duma, the military told Reuters, saying Dawabsheh threw stones at Israeli civilians. The soldier was working as a security guard for Giborei David, according to B'Tselem.

Reuters could not confirm whether the soldier was employed as a security guard and by whom.

The military didn't comment on whether it would take action against the off-duty soldier accused in the fatal shooting. It said that incidents where soldiers fail to comply with orders are thoroughly reviewed and disciplinary actions implemented accordingly.

Giborei David's construction led to the forced displacement of 11 Bedouin herding families in March, Duma residents say. The settlers have seized Duma's water resources, damaged electricity supply, and confiscated some 700 hectares (1,700 acres) of land, said Suleiman Dawabsheh, the head of Duma's council.

The Libis are trying "to depopulate an entire village," of 3,000 people, said Etkes, the Israeli activist, of Duma.

Daif Allaa, a Bedouin Palestinian, says that in March, his family was among those forced to flee land seized for the Giborei David outpost.

Allaa said settlers threw stones at his home, cut his electricity, played loud music late at night, hit his nephew's head with a stick, and pepper-sprayed his son. He showed Reuters videos of settlers roaming around his home.

In one, young men wore hooded sweatshirts bearing a promise to honour the legacy of Eliav Libi's son and quoting from the biblical verse Jeremiah 32:41. The passage prophesies a Jewish return to the West Bank following the Babylonian exile some 2,500 years ago.

"They do not want anyone to be on the land," Allaa said. "They do not want any Arabs there."

In March, the Israeli government granted Giborei David official state recognition.