Israel holds legislative elections in October. With a worse showing in the polls than the opposition, the ultranationalist partners who dream of Greater Israel fear the end of the colonizing “miracle,” as one of their ministers, Orit Strock, defined it in a closed-door meeting with settlers last year. “I feel,” he said, “like someone who stops at a traffic light and suddenly the light is green.”
Netanyahu’s government (which is, since the founding of the country in 1948, the one with the greatest weight of ultranationalists) has been rapidly transforming the West Bank since 2022. The result: an unprecedented expansion of settlements, overshadowed by the invasion of Gaza; record land expropriations and more than 3,000. This month, it has also stepped on the accelerator with a series of measures, the Palestinian territory that it has occupied militarily since 1967, but which has never been formally annexed, unlike East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan. Everything is becoming faster and more explicit, with a new fashionable word in national political jargon: sovereignty.
The consequences are visible. Every journey through the West Bank brings something new. From more Israeli flags or Jewish symbols on the side of the roads to the virtual absence of Palestinians in open spaces, replaced by also some proto-settlement on a hill or new barriers at the entrance of Palestinian towns. There are even real estate ads in neighborhoods previously considered remote.
The key to the transformation is the transfer of powers from the military authorities (which, in theory, occupy the territory temporarily) to the civilian authorities. It generates a situation equivalent to annexation, but without a formal declaration. As the ultranationalist Minister of Legacy, Amijai Eliyahu, said on the 4th: “Sovereignty is not a declaration. It is an action.”
The head of Finance, the ultra Bezalel Smotrich, is leading the process thanks to the parallel Defense portfolio that Netanyahu tailor-made for him, in order to regain power. He created a Settlements Division that manages day-to-day civil affairs in most of the West Bank and hoped that 2025 would be “with the help of God, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” the official and biblical term for the West Bank.
It didn’t happen. Annexation remains in factand not de jurein 2026 because last October – when the announcement seemed imminent – the president of the United States, Donald Trump, met with his Arab and Muslim allies and used a very different tone from the usual strong support for Netanyahu. “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. It will not happen […] said.
“The annexation has already happened, but it is also happening. It is a process,” Lior Amijai, executive director of Shalom Ajshav (Peace Now, in Hebrew), Israel’s main pacifist organization, which closely follows decisions on the West Bank, said by phone. “Israel could have made a decision: ‘We have annexed the territories and from now on the law applies here [civil] of Israel.” But not even this Government and not even with Trump can do it, so it is doing it in a process that makes us understand that, in a way, it is already annexed to a large extent, but it can still be more so.”
“Urgent sovereignty”
It’s not enough for everyone. Last July, 71 of the Knesset’s 120 deputies (three more than the ruling coalition combined) called for formal annexation. The representatives of the settlers push. They consider that it would send a clear message to the Palestinians: stop dreaming of their own state because it will not happen. “It is urgent. A clear sovereignty [israelí] establishes law and borders and eliminates the illusion of a ‘future Palestinian state,’ two co-presidents of the Movement for Sovereignty, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, wrote last week. Smotrich has proposed annexing 85% of the West Bank (everything except the cities where the vast majority of Palestinians live) following the motto of “maximum territory, minimum Arabs.”
The transition from military to civilian hands is precisely the essence of the latest decision, approved on Sunday: , paralyzed in 1968, a year after the occupation of the territory. Under an administrative cloak, it hides a lot of depth. It is a process that the British authorities began during their Protectorate (1917-1948) and the Jordanian authorities continued (1949-1967) with the aim of determining – with more modern criteria – who owned each piece of land. When, in 1967, Israel conquered the West Bank in just six days of war, it became an occupying power, without the power to allocate land and, in theory, for a limited time. So, although two-thirds of the land remained to be registered, he issued a military directive a year later to stop it.
This Sunday, Netanyahu’s Government ordered the Armed Forces to modify the directive and budgeted 244 million shekels (about 66 million euros) for the first five years of the 30 years in which it intends to complete the process. It will go from the Civil Administration (a Defense organization) to a Property Title Registry, dependent on the Ministry of Justice.
A century after its start, the registry today has nothing innocent or merely technical. It is, rather, a victory for settler organizations, whose voice has never been more heard in Jerusalem. “We know who is leading it, has lobbied for it, and what their intentions are, which makes the process a form of,” Amijai points out.
Lose the lands
Palestinians will have to prove ownership of the land, even though it sometimes goes back several generations, has been fragmented among numerous descendants (including refugees in neighboring countries) or is not supported by documents. Those who cannot, will lose them forever. Proving it is cumbersome, bureaucratic and expensive. And it will be elucidated by the military authorities of a country interested in having them registered, not as private lands, but as state lands, which have been the basis of decades of colonization.
The registration will take place in area C, the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control (administrative and security) where half a million Jewish settlers and some 300,000 Palestinians live. 58% of the land in area C remains unregistered, says Shalom Ajshav. The Netanyahu Government now aims to regularize at least 15% of them as state-owned, as stated in the decision itself.
The fight for territory is behind other important decisions. Among them, two historic requests from the settlers: the publication of the registry of landowners in the West Bank and the annulment of a Jordanian law (1953) that prevented non-Arabs from acquiring land directly. It will make land sales, marked by tricks and falsification of documents, easier. Until now, they could only through companies, and without a listing, so pressures and contacts for the owners will foreseeably increase. In the midst of a territorial conflict, Palestinians who sell land to settlers face social disgrace (they tend to flee sooner) and, in theory, even the death penalty, although the president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), Mahmoud Abbas, has not signed them for two decades.
In addition, Smotrich will be able to easily take over the other 40% of the West Bank (built illegally, because the Israeli military authorities do not grant permits) that he has fired in zone C. The authorities have received the power to demolish constructions in zones A (the large cities and where the ANP has both administrative and security control) and B (their surroundings, under the administrative power of the ANP) alleging the defense of archaeological sites or the environment. “It is very vague, has nothing to do with security and violates the agreements signed by Israel,” laments the executive director of Shalom Ajshav.
Legacy Authority
On the 3rd, a parliamentary committee gave the green light to a bill to go further in heritage matters. It consists of another transfer from military to civilian hands, with the creation of a Legacy authority responsible for “all matters of heritage, antiquities and archaeology, including the preservation, restoration, development and rescue of antiquities, excavation, site development and management.” Its promoter, Zvi Sukkot, of the party led by Smotrich (Religious Zionism), made his vision clear: “What there is is a Jewish legacy that dates back thousands of years and it is our responsibility to protect it.”
If approved (it still needs to pass three readings in plenary), it would mark the first time that Parliament applied Israeli civil legislation directly on West Bank territory, instead of – as until now – on people (settlers), according to pacifist and human rights organizations.
The Government has also given a new twist to the erasure of the Green Line, the internationally recognized dividing line between Israel and the Palestinian territories (Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem) that does not appear on the official maps of the Jewish State. This is the first project since it expanded its municipal area, from six square kilometers to 76, after conquering the eastern part of the city in 1967.
Once again, through the back door. On paper, it appears as a plan to build thousands of homes in Adam, a colony in the West Bank. In practice, they will be further from Adam than from Neve Yaakov, another settlement, but already within the municipal limit of Jerusalem, as seen on the official map, released this Monday by Shalom Ajshav. The houses, in fact, are designed for ultra-Orthodox Jews, like those who live in Neve Yaakov, and a road will connect them.
