Israel seizes homes inside Palestinian Authority-controlled part of West Bank, raising annexation alarms
Smoke rises following Israeli army attacks, which destroyed buildings in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on 2 February 2025
Asmaa al-Masalmeh reports in Mondoweiss on 16 June 2026:
Muhammad Hussein Rahal’s home in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, has been seized and slated for demolition by the Israeli army, along with two neighboring houses.
But the seizure of Rahal’s home is unlike other Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes, which are commonplace across the West Bank. Rahal’s home is being destroyed to build an Israeli military base — possibly the first ever built on land under Palestinian Authority (PA) control.
Rahal’s home sits in Area A, the small portion of the West Bank that technically falls under the PA’s full control — an area that for decades has been regarded as the “safest” place in the West Bank for Palestinians to build a home. The Israeli army’s seizure of Rahal’s home marks what appears to be the first time since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 that Israel has seized land in Area A for military purposes. Palestinians say the move not only proves the Oslo Accords are truly dead but also shows that Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank are moving ahead at full steam.
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Until now, Israel’s settlement expansion and land seizures had been concentrated in Area C, which it carried out through a variety of legal and administrative measures meant to establish Israel’s de facto annexation of the territory. Moving into Area A, however, marks a shift from encirclement to penetration: no longer merely surrounding Palestinian population centers, but entering them. If it becomes a precedent, it would further the oft-repeated goal of hardline Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to “bury” a Palestinian state by rendering Palestinian land geographically non-contiguous and administratively incoherent. It would mean that the West Bank has been all but annexed to Israel, and that the Oslo Accords are effectively over.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has warned that such measures represent “deliberate, incremental steps toward permanent annexation, advanced piece by piece, in broad daylight, and with total impunity.”