Blog Post: Annexation Boomerang

February 2026

by Mark Gold

Since coming to power, the extremist Netanyahu government has waged a war against the West Bank Palestinian population, with a goal of promoting Jewish settlement and a condition of narrow urban compartmentalization for Palestinian residents. Plans generated by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (and actuated and enforced by Itamar Ben Gvir, Minister of National Security) have displaced Palestinians through a campaign of terror and violence. What began as ad hoc pogroms, such as the settler riot in Huwara almost exactly three years ago, has developed into a conscious campaign of violence and displacement which only accelerated after October 7th, 2023 and the Gaza War. Such actions could not be possible without both the tacit support of the police under Ben Gvir, and the acquiescence of the Israeli military. 

This process has been aided through abuses of law: methods which long preceded the current government, but which have been accelerated under its aegis. Former Israeli Prime Minister (then Minister of Agriculture) Ariel Sharon, for example, used “firing zone” declarations to close areas of the West Bank, including Masafer Yatta. Sharon had explicitly stated in a document uncovered by researchers in Israeli government archives, that the purpose of these “firing zone” designations was to aid in the expulsion of local Palestinian populations and the facilitation of Jewish settlement. In spite of this and evidence of historical local settlement by the Palestinian residents, court appeals were rejected and residents have been given orders to leave their homes. Since those orders, residents have been harassed, movement has been obstructed, and gradually people have been forced out. International attention, highlighted by the award winning film “No Other Land,” has slowed but not stopped the process. Indeed, the close of the film documents the shooting of Zakaria al-Adra, cousin of one of the film directors, on October 13th, 2023, by an armed settler. Weeks later, the family’s home was destroyed.

Today, about 30% of Area C, the segment of the West Bank granted Israeli military control under the Oslo agreements, has been designated as firing zones. Under the current regime, these zones in Area C have been supplemented by Israeli Jewish shepherding outposts, with associated grazing permits. Israeli civil society groups have documented how Jewish settler shepherds run their flocks onto Palestinian lands, terrorize residents, and serve as key agents of displacement.  

Israel applies military law in the West Bank because, formally, the area is legally under military occupation. Recently, however, the Netanyahu administration has taken several steps to erode the legal distinctions that come with occupation and international agreements it has signed since the occupation began. This month, the cabinet approved a policy permitting West Bank land sales with almost no oversight, eliminating previous approval requirements, and declassifying land registry records. In contravention to the Oslo agreements, the cabinet removed zoning control in Areas A and B from Palestinian authorities and placed those powers with Israel’s Civil Administration. These moves remove anti-fraud protections which are important in light of documented settler fraud in claiming land sales and ownership. More significantly, in eroding the boundaries between civilian and military administration, the Netanyahu government advances a tacit annexation.

A week later, the Israeli cabinet voted to reopen land registration in Area C of the West Bank, a step which unfreezes the land ownership status quo in place since the Six Day War and will permit a process under which the government can seize lands and give them to settlers. 

These recent decisions should not be understood as a reversion to law but rather an erosion of it. The extension of Israeli civil authority into the Occupied Territories is part of the process of making the Green Line a porous border, but through methods that make it porous only one way. Annexation de jure would open a discussion concerning civil rights and the status of all the residents. It would also defy explicit warnings President Trump has made. De facto annexation avoids those problems.

The new actions should be seen in the context of the extremist agenda of the government and its recognition that its time in power may be ending soon. Elections in Israel must be held no later than October and political polling has shown consistently that the governing coalition is likely to lose. Smotrich and Ben Gvir are striving to put in place conditions which a subsequent government would find hard to reverse. .

The use of settler terror and the defiance of international law and signed agreements, represent a power grab that erodes legal foundations, phenomena which can’t be isolated to the space east of the Green Line; they are part of a general process. Ziv Stahl of the legal civil society organization Yesh Din is correct in saying these moves are all connected with the governing coalition’s effort to gain control of the courts and remove the legal obstacles restraining their agenda. 

Last August, the cabinet voted unanimously to remove Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, an action nullified by the Supreme Court. It is through the office of the Attorney General that cases of corruption are being prosecuted including three charges against Netanyahu himself and still other investigations. More generally, the cabinet is trying to gain control of the office or diminish it because it is an independent pillar for the rule of law and a restraint against the government. The Netanyahu regime is also trying to disrupt the rule of law by intimidating government employees. Just this month, Ben Gvir was ordered by a court to stop withholding a promotion for Rinat Saban, whose advancement Ben Gvir has blocked after she testified in Netanyahu’s corruption trial. And this week, Ben Gvir has pressed for the passage of a law permitting indicted officials to remain in government office, a response to a court ordered prohibition. 

The lawlessness Smotrich and Ben Gvir have promoted in the West Bank will not be confined there. It is already corroding the foundations of Israeli governance, the rule of law, and principles of civil rights and democracy to which this government has little allegiance.

Mark Gold is Board Treasurer of Partners for Progressive Israel.