Israel just took another huge step towards West Bank annexation, explained
The illegal Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim
Qassam Muaddi writes in Mondoweiss on 3 June 2025:
The Israeli government’s decision last Thursday [29 May] to create 22 new settlements in the West Bank was reported as regular news in most mainstream media. Although it received official condemnations from the UK, Finland, and some Arab states, the decision passed with absolutely no practical consequence for Israel, despite European threats to impose sanctions.
On the other hand, within Israeli politics, the decision was regarded as far from ordinary and received with widespread fanfare. The Israeli Defense Ministry called the decision “historic,” while the Defense Minister, Israel Katz, said that the decision “reinforces Israel’s control over Judea and Samaria,” Israel’s term for the occupied West Bank.” Israel’s hardline Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, celebrated the move as “a great day for the settlement movement and an important day for the State of Israel.”
The Israeli celebration is understandable, being one of the largest settlement expansion decisions in decades: it simultaneously sanctioned the rebuilding of evacuated settlements that had been dismantled in 2005, legalized already-existing outposts that had hitherto been deemed illicit under Israeli law, and on top of all this, approved the building of additional settlements.
The geographical distribution of this planned network of settlements, some of it already in existence, will ensure Israel’s grip on the West Bank is all-encompassing. The sprawling web includes four settlements in the Ramallah area in the central West Bank, four in Jenin in the north, four more in Hebron in the south, two in Nablus in the center-north, one in Salfit in the northeast, three in Jericho in the southern Jordan Valley, three more across the Jordan Valley itself, and one in East Jerusalem.
In short, it is annexation in all but name.