In-depth: A quiet move to transfer power over the West Bank from military to civilian officials amounts to a formal annexation of the Palestinian territory.
A civilian official working under far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich was covertly given control of Israel’s Civil Administration, the ruling military agency in the West Bank, in May. This move raised concerns that Israel was firmly annexing the occupied Palestinian land.
Everything that governs civilian life in the occupied West Bank will now fall under the purview of Smotrich’s Settlements Administration, including construction codes, forestry, agriculture, parks, and bathing areas.
60% of the occupied Palestinian land lies in Area C of the West Bank, which is predominately rural and under the jurisdiction of the Civil Administration. By officially annexing the Palestinian land, Israel is indicating that its 57-year military occupation of the West Bank is permanent by transferring legal authority from the armed forces to civilian hands.
Experts in international law and analysis have long maintained that although the West Bank is not formally annexed, it is de facto annexated.
Palestinian-Dutch analyst Mouin Rabbani told The New Arab that “one threshold that marks the distinction between de facto and formal annexation is that military occupation means the occupied territory is essentially placed under military rule – implying it’s temporary, that it’s being administered separately from the governance of the occupying state.”
However, by extending its civil law and treating the region as part of Israel, Israel is annexing occupied Palestinian territory with this change of power.
One of the main effects of this decision, according to Mauricio Lapchik of the Israeli activist group Peace Now, is “the establishment of new settlements in the short term.”
These consequences are beginning to show themselves already. Israel’s security cabinet last week authorized five settlement outposts in the West Bank retroactively. According to Israeli legislation, outposts are Israeli colonies built without official government sanction.
According to international law, outposts and settlements are both unlawful. Furthermore, this week Israel is scheduled to authorize around 6,000 units of settlement homes in the West Bank.
Professor of international human rights law at Boston University Susan Akram told TNA that “Palestinians in the West Bank will continue to be dispossessed, forcibly displaced, and victimized as Israel settlement expansion is entrenched and expanded.”
Experts, however, also offer a positive assessment of this development, speculating that it would lead to Israel’s isolation and increased international pressure on the government.
According to Rabbani, “as time goes on, people begin to look at the bigger picture and realize this is about Israel seeking to establish exclusive supremacy over the entirety of mandatory Palestine, not just about Hamas and the Gaza Strip.” “And that will result in more people opposing Israel.”
As the chance of a two-state solution being achieved is eliminated, Akram continued, this could also lead other nations to censure Israel.
“More and more states will join in isolating Israel, and it’s very likely that international sanctions will be imposed against Israel in a manner akin to what happened to bring an end to the apartheid government in South Africa,” Akram stated.
According to Peace Now, the change in power not only eliminates the possibility of a Palestinian state emerging in the West Bank, but it also runs the risk of endangering Israeli and Palestinian security.
“Building new settlements or legalising new outposts in the West Bank will request from the Israeli army to bring more soldiers to those areas,” Lapchik said, noting Israel doesn’t have the capacity to intensify its military presence in the West Bank amid an ongoing war on Gaza and looming war with Lebanon.
“We saw on the 7th of October, how many soldiers were protecting the settlements in the West Bank and how many soldiers were missing in the South in order to protect the Israeli communities within [Israel’s borders],” Lapchik said.
The most recent development will make it harder for Palestinians to move throughout the West Bank freely as the number of settlers grows and the number of roads designated for them expands. Furthermore, Israel will keep stealing Palestinian agricultural land for its own farming and building projects, undermining the West Bank’s economy.
“Palestinians will realize that this region has no hope or future, and this will lead to increased conflict, violence, and devastation,” Lapchik predicted.
Smotrich’s idea came to pass
With his Decisive Plan for Israel, Smotrich offered his proposal for a peace between Israel and Palestine in 2017.
He urged for the expulsion of Palestinians requesting self-determination and denied Palestinian statehood in this document. Rather, he favored quickening the process of settlement growth between the Jordanian River and the Mediterranean Sea. After securing a prominent government position five years later, Smotrich is currently carrying out his goal.
Smotrich declared, “We came to settle the land, to build it, and to prevent its division and the establishment of a Palestinian state,” during his Religious Zionism party’s internal congress in June. “And developing the settlements is the way to prevent this.”
Smotrich explained to conference attendees that finalizing annexation and altering the DNA on the ground depend on the transition from military to governmental administration.
The truth is that we originally considered taking it entirely away from the Ministry of Defense. In the end, Smotrich informed the audience in a leaked video that Peace Now was able to get, “[We did it in a way that] it would be easier to swallow in the political and legal context, so that they wouldn’t say that we are now doing an annexation.”
With a stroke of a pen, Israel is erasing the rights that Palestinians have long fought for, as Smotrich is not-so-secretly annexing Palestinian territory, according to Palestinians like Jamal Juma, coordinator of Stop the Wall, a grassroots campaign against the Israeli-built wall separating the West Bank from Jerusalem.
“Smotrich is throwing – once and forever – the Palestinian state into the trash of history,” Juma said.
