Orit Strock is a central figure in the Israeli settlement movement. She and her partner helped co-found the Israeli settlement in the heart of Hebron, where she still lives. In 1995, Strock helped establish the Women’s Committee for the Cave and championed a Jewish presence at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron after the massacre committed by Baruch Goldstein there. Strock later headed Hebron’s Jewish settlement political department, struggled against the evacuation of Israeli outposts and established the Human Rights Organization of Judea and Samaria in order to defend settlers arrested by Israeli law enforcement. She was first elected to the Knesset in 2013 and co-founded the Knesset Land of Israel Caucus to strengthen and reinforce Israeli control in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

 

Strock is a longstanding advocate of positions denying existence of the Palestinian people and its rights, including the right to self-definition. For example, during a Knesset hearing in 2021, Strock said: “There is a Land of Israel and it is all ours and was given to us by the creator of the universe, and since there is no Land of Palestine, there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.” During a meeting of the Knesset Land of Israel Caucus in 2024, Strock called to apply Israeli sovereignty to the entire Land of Israel. Strock has also consistently denied the existence of settler violence, thereby granting this phenomenon political support.

 

After the government was established in 2022, Strock was appointed on behalf of the Religious Zionism party as Minister of Settlement and National Missions. Thus, the politician who for years expressed consistent views in favor of annexation, expanding settlements and denying Palestinians national rights gained control over huge budgets, executive mechanisms and governmental tools that directly influence the territory, Israeli settlements and Palestinian communities in the West Bank. This appointment gave her the ability to apply the ideology she had championed for years as government policy and make profound changes on the ground.

 

She described the Ministry as the “culmination of Religious Zionism’s vision and goals”, based on a “comprehensive and strong hold” over the land and “a sacred duty to settle it”. One of her areas of focus is providing government funding for outposts and farming outposts, used for Israeli takeover of land by displacing Palestinian communities.

 

In November 2024, Strock clarified the type of regime she seeks to establish once the West Bank is annexed: “The national right over the land belongs solely to the people of Israel,” adding that the Palestinians “would not be able to vote for the Knesset.” This is a vision of annexation and extreme apartheid regime; once Strock entered the halls of power and assumed control over budgets and settlement mechanisms, it has become the government’s operative plan.