I agree with ecofarm, the building of new settlements is hardly justified.
Since this discussion has changed into a general exchange of ideas on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
My opinion on this whole conflict recetly shifted a great deal from a slightly pro-palestinian, sympathy-for-the-underdog sort of attitude towards, a better understanding of Israel (not really a justification of its policies though). I had a long conversation with a Palestinian 20-year-old whose family is associated with Fatah, and what he basically told me is three things:
1. The majority of the Palestinians will never accept Israel's right to exist.
2. A two state solution with the West Bank and Gaza strip outside of Israeli control is seen by most Palestinians as a first step towards a "liberation" of Palestine as a whole (dissolving the Jewish state).
3. The reason why most Palestinians don't get to "work" for a "liberation" of Palestine is that they have to struggle to survive in the West bank.
How then should Israel make peace? How can Israel stop the horrible, humiliating, and inhumane occupation regime of the West Bank with its walls, checkpoints, soldiers, and settlers making Palestinian life a miserable struggle, how can Israel stop all of that or parts of it without risking its own existence? Would there be terrorism and mass murder if you let the Palestinians breathe free? Are the settlements, from an Israeli perspective, created to prevent that, to put an ever increasing pressure on the Palestinians so that they either get out of there or, well, not die, but are busy struggling to survive and can't cause any trouble?
Horrible. Simply horrible.