In order for the settelments to be illegal the West Bank must be considered "occupied". The official Israeli position has always been that the West Bank cannot be considered occupied since no country had recognized sovereignty over it before the six-day-war. It was Ottoman land, then British and then Jordanian, but the Jordanian sovereignty was never recognized (and they no longer wany it anyways). Therefore the longstanding Israeli position has always been that the land is "disputed" rather then "occupied".

Of course, the Palestinians have the right to self determination where they reside, but area C is mostly uninhibited by Palestinians and both Jews and Palestinians have historical claim over it. It doesn't make any sense to argue that the Palestinians have an exclusive right to 100% of the West Bank. Based on what? Usually when people say the settelments are illegal they cite the wide international consensus and the numerous UN resolutions,, but they never explain why is it so. we should challenge this consensus, not surrender to it, in the same way we challenge the Apartheid libel.

That's being said; I do believe that isolated settelments that make the land harder to partition should not be built as they are a physical barrier to a future peace deal. Yet, I also think we should reject the narrative that we are stealing land that is for some reason 100% Palestinian when we are building settelments there.

It makes me crazy to see that so many Israelis online are not challenging the notion that the settelments are illegal when the issue of settelments comes up, instead pandering to the made up consensus of the "international community". The next time someone refers to the West Bank as "occupied" simply ask them:

occupied from whom?