Legislation, land grabs point to expedited Israeli annexation in the West Bank
The illegal outpost Ma’aleh Rehavam in the West Bank in November 2024
Noa Shpigel and Hagar Shezaf report in Haaretz on 20 April 2025:
Signs that have gone up across the West Bank recently create the impression that a general election in Israel is imminent. One features a photo of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, captioned, “We are happy to announce the legalization of the community of Evyatar,” alongside the slogan “Settlement Revolution 2025.” The Religious Zionism party is also mentioned on signs, of course. While Smotrich’s economic promises are just that, his campaign to annex West Bank settlements has tangible results.
Soon after the current government took office at the end of 2023, a “settlement administration” was created within the Defense Ministry, at Smotrich’s demand.
Its purpose was to transfer the management of civilian life in West Bank settlements from military to civilian control. According to several jurists, this move in itself constitutes an annexation of the West Bank. The agency’s founders don’t hide the fact that this is their goal.
The chief of staff for the administration, Yoni Danino, told Haaretz that its two main objectives are to make the state treat the West Bank as it does the Negev and the Galilee regions in terms of development and allocation of resources, and “to impose Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”
This, Danino added, requires the Knesset to pass new legislation. “We don’t have the power to do that, but we do have the power to bring the situation to the closest point we can for this to happen.”
He said that the more facts are created on the ground by the administration, “in an orderly regulatory process, with one more industrial zone, one more road and home; the more things will mature, with the capability of bringing about sovereignty in a better manner. The imposition of sovereignty is not my decision to make, but I can create a reality of a de facto sovereignty.”
For example, he says, it’s possible to create conditions that will lead to annexation, such as building roads in the West Bank that residents of central Israel will use, or creating a solar energy industry in the West Bank.
“If we make it so that all residents of central Israel drive to the Golan Heights via Judea and Samaria, because that’s how Waze directs them because Route 5 and Route 90 were expanded and there’s a great interchange and no traffic jams, in the end this will bring about sovereignty” over the West Bank, Danino said.
“And if 20 percent of Israel’s energy production is in Judea and Samaria, including solar and other renewable sources, that will lead to sovereignty.”
Danino mentions favorably the way the lives of West Bank settlers are being managed by the current government, following changes made by his agency.
“The manner of management has completely changed,” he said. “Civilians here are subject to the sovereign, which by law is the commander of the IDF Central Command, but managing everything in practice are civilians, not people who view things from a security perspective, in cases such as whether it’s allowed to place a new balcony somewhere or not, or whether a balcony in [the settlement of] Beit El will affect the security situation in [the Palestinian city of] Ramallah. The army can give its perspective, but it doesn’t manage the process.”
Danino said the motivation for building in the settlements has increased significantly during the current government’s term. “For many years, no settlements were established in Judea and Samaria. In the present government’s term, 28 new communities have been officially established. These aren’t some groups setting up an outpost. This is a major jump, percentage-wise. It’s not like setting up 10 settlements in the entire southern part of the country.”
However, Danino added, “the fact that we feel free doesn’t mean we’re like a phalangist militia. This is a par excellence government act. If it’s a budget for a road, it has been approved by the treasury’s budget department and by the Transportation Ministry’s accountant general. If it’s an approval for the construction of an apartment, it goes through the Defense Ministry’s judicial department, the Justice Ministry and the planning authorities. Why is this surprising? Because it didn’t exist in the past. But if we compare this to other places in Israel that are not Judea and Samaria, there is nothing outstanding here.”
A military checkpoint in the West Bank in February.Credit: Moti Milrod
The increase in construction in settlements is reflected in data provided to Haaretz by Peace Now, based on figures of the Higher Planning Council. In 2022, plans were advanced to build 4,427 residential units in the West Bank. In 2023, this jumped to 12,349. After falling to 9,971 in 2024, the first three months of 2025 saw 14,335 units in the planning.
In this context, Hagit Ofran of Peace Now says: “While an entire country is engaged in releasing our hostages, occupied with the war and with opposition to a regime overhaul, the Netanyahu-Smotrich government is exploiting its power in order to realize the fantasies of the messianic right wing, causing a deterioration in Israel’s security and diplomatic standing, bringing these to the brink of an abyss. Annexation by the government harms security, not just in the short term, but also deals a critical blow to the possibility of rebuilding Israel with prospects for a future of peace and security, with two states for two peoples. Only a diplomatic solution will ensure security and a better future for Israel.”
The executive director of the Yesh Din human rights organization, Ziv Stahl, adds that “annexation is not galloping or crawling, it is already here. Beyond the fact that this is a violation of the most basic concept of international law, which prohibits annexation, this has a dramatic impact on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank: There are three million people there who are not citizens, finding themselves with the status of subjects without rights, left at the mercy of a government which they have no possibility of influencing.”
The year of sovereignty
Already in November, Smotrich declared at a Knesset caucus faction that Donald Trump’s election victory “brings with it an important opportunity: 2025 will be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.” Indeed, the Knesset’s winter session saw many bills submitted by coalition lawmakers aimed at changing the character of the West Bank. These were backed by cabinet resolutions and regulations that ignored both Palestinian residents and international law.
For example, Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf extended the jurisdiction of urban renewal laws to the West Bank, allowing developers to receive generous tax benefits. This was done to build tens of thousands of apartments in settlements in an expedited manner. These benefits include exemptions from betterment taxes, purchase tax and value-added tax on construction.
United Torah Judaism party leader Yitzchak Goldknopf.Credit: Ohad Zwigenberg
In late January, a bill that would make it easier for Jews to buy land in the West Bank passed the first of several mandatory votes in the Knesset. Currently, Jews cannot purchase land privately, only through companies that are registered with the Civil Administration. The bill seeks to change this and to void a law enacted in the West Bank when it was under Jordanian rule, which prohibited the rental or sale of real estate to anyone who is not Jordanian, Palestinian or from another Arab country. The new bill was submitted by MK Moshe Solomon of Religious Zionism.
Another bill that passed its first hurdle in the Knesset in November would define military courts in the West Bank as courts that fall under the law governing the collection of fines, permits and expenses. This will allow for the collection of fines from Palestinians, even if they were not imposed by military courts.
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In a separate move, MK Amit Halevi is promoting the establishment of an agency to deal with antiquities in the West Bank, under the Heritage Ministry. A bill he proposed earlier, which would put the West Bank under the jurisdiction of the Israel Antiquities Authority, encountered opposition from professionals and the agency.
A bill that was passed this month will enable local governments that administer settlements in the West Bank to receive some of the property and other taxes paid in industrial zones on the Israeli side of the Green Line. Before the final approval of the bill, which was sponsored by MK Yakov Asher of United Torah Judaism, the interior minister was authorized to determine that property taxes from industrial zones would be divided only among local authorities adjacent to Israel’s borders.
Regarding the transfer of funds from Israel to the West Bank, Otzma Yehudit is also demonstrating some activity. MK Limor Son Har-Melech is advancing a bill that would make the West Bank’s Hebron Hills and Kiryat Arba local authorities part of the Negev for administrative purposes. This would allow settlers in these jurisdictions to benefit from the budgets of the Negev Development Authority.
MK Limor Son Har-Melech.Credit: Sraya Diamant
The bill passed a preliminary round of voting in May and was discussed during the winter session of the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee. Committee chair MK David Biton, recognizing that passing this law would require imposing Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, instructed the committee’s legal adviser to examine how the bill could be formulated to bypass the stipulations set by international law.
Even though all this legislation is in its incipient phase, budgets for the settlements are already flowing. The state budget for 2024 and 2025 allocates millions of shekels to West Bank settlements, not including special funds that are given to coalition parties for discretionary use.
According to Peace Now, the Knesset Finance Committee approved a supplement of 302 million shekels ($81.9 million) for the National Missions Ministry in July. In March, 200 million shekels were added to the ministry’s draft budget.
If the ceremony in which this ministry handed over some all-terrain Ranger vehicles to settlers in the southern Hebron hills looked modest, it turns out that an additional 75 million shekels were allocated to “supporting defense elements, adding to the 2024 budget funds left in the 2023 budget.”
A makeshift “observation point” set up by settlers at the entrance of the Jordan valley village of Ein al-Hilwa, last week.Credit: Moti Milrod
These funds are intended for “addressing the humanitarian and security needs in Judea and Samaria settlements.” The office of National Missions Minister Orit Strock refused to explain how the people getting the vehicles were chosen.
In the service of the government
Annexation moves advanced by the government are accompanied by steps designed to empty Israeli-administered Area C (as determined in the Oslo Accords) of Palestinians, with the settlers taking over, something that serves the government’s purposes.
The most salient move in this tradition of takeovers is the expulsion of small sheep-herding communities from the area. These communities often live in tents, relying on grazing their sheep or cattle for a living. According to data released by the Kerem Navot nonprofit organization, 60 such communities have been driven out of Area C by settlers since the war began.
There is a tight connection between the communities fleeing from their place of residence and the increase in the number of illegal farms in the West Bank. This phenomenon began picking up speed a decade ago but has reached unprecedented proportions since the current government was formed, and even more so since the war started.
A herd of goats in the Hebron Hills village of Zanuta, last year.Credit: Moti Milrod
According to a recent report by Kerem Navot and Peace Now, these farm outposts have so far taken over 194,000 acres, constituting 14 percent of the West Bank’s territory. According to the report, over 70 percent of this territory was taken over in the last two and a half years alone.
According to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, settler violence in the last two years has become the leading factor in the uprooting of Palestinians from Area C from their homes. While in the past, the reason was the demolition of houses due to the absence of building permits, OCHA’s report in February shows that in 2023, 1,600 Palestinians left their homes due to settler violence, with 300 people leaving after their homes were demolished by the Civil Administration. In 2024, 620 Palestinians left their homes due to settler violence, with 370 leaving after their homes were demolished. According to OCHA, the number of violent incidents against Bedouin and shepherd communities grew sevenfold between 2020 and 2024.
Since the present government was formed, several large-scale riots by settlers have taken place in Palestinian villages and towns, including Hawara, in February 2023, following the murder of Hillel and Yogev Yaniv, who lived in the settlement of Har Bracha.
A truck set on fire by settlers in the West Bank village of Jinsafut in January.Credit: Itai Ron
There were also riots in the villages of Turmus Ayya and Umm Safa in June 2023. However, the most significant increase in settler violence occurred after October 7. According to OCHA, Palestinians were attacked by settlers at an average of four times a day just in the period between October 7, 2023 and January 18, 2024.
In the year after the war began, OCHA recorded 1,360 instances of such attacks. At least in some of these, Palestinians were shot to death by settlers. This occurred after the murder of Binyamin Ahimeir last April, which unleashed rioting in villages in the area close to the murder site. This culminated in the death of four Palestinians. The riot in the village of Jatt last August also ended with a villager being shot dead. Up to now, no indictment has been filed due to these murders.
The lack of law enforcement by the Judea and Samaria District police under the current government is striking. In December, the commander of this district, Avishai Mualem, was arrested. He was in charge of enforcing the law against Jews suspected of politically-motivated terror, but was suspected of ignoring intelligence transferred to the police with regard to Jews suspected of such acts.
Following the appointment of Israel Katz as minister of defense, he announced that he was canceling the use of administrative detention – detention without trial – against settlers. Such detentions were one of the key tools used by the Shin Bet Security service for the prevention of politically-motivated Jewish terror in the West Bank.
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