“An Immediate Threat to the Remaining Institutions of Israeli Democracy, and to Human Rights for Palestinians and Israelis:” Partners for Progressive Israel Statement on Recent Israeli Security Council Announcements

“An Immediate Threat to the Remaining Institutions of Israeli Democracy, and to Human Rights for Palestinians and Israelis:” Partners for Progressive Israel Statement on Recent Israeli Security Council Announcements

February 10th, 2026 –Partners for Progressive Israel regards the latest announcements of Israel’s security cabinet with great concern. Announced by ministers Yisrael Katz and Betzalel Smotrich, which apply only in Areas A and B of the West Bank and run counter to the binding agreements of the Oslo Accords, they reflect an aggressive policy of encroaching Israeli sovereignty into Palestinian territory. We regard these announcements and the policies they contain serve as yet another legal step that solidifies the shift of Israel’s half-century military occupation of Palestinian territory into civil annexation, in grave violation of international law and to the ultimate detriment of the human rights of everyone in the region.

We view with alarm Minister Smotrich’s assertion that his explicit intention is to “kill the idea of a Palestinian state.” It is not only concerning but illegal for the minister to act as a kind of unelected governor-figure making policy decisions for the over three million Palestinian people living in areas A and B of the West Bank. These new policies include the “cancellation” of laws dating from Jordanian control of the West Bank, an expedited process to allow Israeli settlers to privately purchase additional land (a process that has been characterized by document forgery and violent intimidation of Palestinian landowners, in addition to its promotion of illegal settlement expansion), and the transfer of key religious sites in the West Bank to Israeli municipal authorities and to the IDF’s Civil Administration division.

While presenting their decisions as a matter of security and financial policy, Minister Smotrich and  Minister Katz are publicly violating international law and further entrenching the annexation of Palestinian territory. This cannot be allowed to proceed, as its illegal stated purpose is to derail any efforts to establish a future state of Palestine.

Said Partners’ Executive Director Rabbi Margo Hughes-Robinson in a statement, “If the current Israeli administration allows this kind of policy to proceed, I fear we will soon be discussing not the dismantling of a decades-long Occupation for the safety of both peoples, but the entrenchment of a permanent apartheid regime. To annex Palestinian land and rewrite the few remaining laws that protect the financial, security, and land rights of the Palestinian people in the West Bank is to entrench a new legal system between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River that delineates rights for different groups on the basis of ethnicity and national identity. We who care deeply for the State of Israel and its inhabitants must raise our voices, and call out these policies as an immediate threat to the remaining institutions of Israeli democracy and to human rights for Palestinians and Israelis alike.”