Below, we republish an interview with the director of Yesh Din (a human rights organization working in the West Bank), published in “+972 Magazine” — an independent magazine run by Palestinian and Israeli journalists — about the Israeli far-right’s plans to expand settlements and annex the territory. The far-right group, part of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, details the state support settlers receive to attack the West Bank population amidst the ongoing genocide in Gaza. While we do not entirely agree with her opinions, we believe this interview will be of interest to our readers.

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Since the formation of Netanyahu’s sixth government in 2022, Israel has steadily tightened its grip on the West Bank, largely outside the gaze of international media. But on Feb. 8, an avalanche of cabinet decisions prompted unusually direct coverage from media outlets not generally known for their diligent attention to the daily reality of occupation, including the BBC, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Last week’s package includes six measures that the Israeli anti-occupation nonprofit Yesh Din warned will “fundamentally alter the legal framework in the West Bank”: from declassifying confidential land records and opening up land sales to Israelis and foreigners, to expanding Israeli “supervision and enforcement activities” into Area A — nominally under Palestinian civil and security control — as well as Area B.

Before attention could drift again, the government took another dramatic step on Sunday by approving a proposal to reopen land registration procedures in the West Bank for the first time since 1967, which will allow the state to register large swaths of territory as “state land.” A day later, it also decided to expand Jerusalem’s municipal borders by establishing a new settlement. Reacting to the land registry decision, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared, “For the first time since the Six Day War, we are restoring order and governance in the management of land in Judea and Samaria.”

Though U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated his opposition to formal annexation last Monday, neither he nor other U.S. officials publicly pressed Netanyahu on the latest decisions. And while the EU and Arab countries responded swiftly with familiar expressions of concern, they lacked a clear answer to the implicit question posed by Israel’s provocative moves: Will you do anything to stop this?

To make sense of what may prove a consequential fortnight in the long arc of annexation, +972 spoke with Ziv Stahl, executive director of Yesh Din. We discussed the significance of these latest measures, why a formal declaration of annexation seems unlikely, the prospect of a West Bank real estate boom, and what, if anything, could be reversed under a different Israeli government.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you walk us through the new cabinet decisions and their significance?

I’d like to start by talking about the context. We are talking about a government that from the very first day declared that one of its main goals is to apply Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank and to expand settlements. I think a lot of Israelis, and people generally, miss the fact that this is part of the judicial overhaul: Once the government removes all watchdogs — critics, legal advisors and so on — it makes it much easier to annex the West Bank.

It would be a mistake to look at these [most recent decisions] one by one, because the importance is the critical mass of steps that are being taken, and the change in the legal framework of how Israel controls the West Bank. But the two out of these six security cabinet decisions that are most critical are the declassification of the land registry in the occupied territory and the cancellation of the Jordanian law prohibiting the sale of land to Israelis or foreigners. These are two steps that are designed to make it easier for settlers and the state to purchase land, and make it harder for Palestinians to maintain their rights to their lands or to acquire the formal rights to land. I think these two measures go together.

Then you have the extension of Israeli law enforcement to areas A and B. We all know that there have been many breaches by Israel of the Oslo Agreement — that Israel enters Area A as it pleases and conducts military operations there. But still, this is basically Israel reempowering itself to have authority that it doesn’t have, officially at least, in those areas.

Legally speaking, I don’t know if we can still call it occupation. I think we have been shifting to a reality of annexation: It’s hard to determine where exactly the pivotal moment was, but the physical situation on the ground in the West Bank has completely changed in these three years of this government.

Trump said there will be no Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. But knowing that he is not really a man of details, Israel’s government is wise enough not to declare openly that this is annexation. But Smotrich, after the announcement of the cabinet division, said he would “continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state.”

Creeping annexation has been underway for decades, but under this government, it really accelerated. I think we’ve reached a kind of critical mass where we can say plainly that this is annexation. It isn’t complete. And I’m not sure if it’s irreversible — few things are — but the deeper it goes, the harder it becomes to undo.

In 2024, the International Court of Justice essentially said%20With%20this%20definition,an%20unlawful%20use%20of%20force.) that the distinction between de facto and de jure annexation is a distraction — what matters is the intention to apply sovereignty. Does the distinction between whether Israel has annexed the West Bank legally (de jure) or just de facto matter anymore in your opinion?

I stopped differentiating between de jure and de facto annexation, because I think it’s one thing — annexation. What we see on the ground is a joint process. Legal changes and facts on the ground are working toward the same outcome.

And for the people who are being annexed, they don’t care so much if it’s done through legal and structural changes [like we see in the recent decisions] or by [Israel] building a lot of settlements and outposts and [settlers] harassing them every day. The reality is that we are seeing a more oppressive system, a narrowing of rights, and deepening violations of international law.

In a sense, our job at Yesh Din has actually become easier. In the past, when we tried to show that Israel was taking steps toward annexation, it sounded a bit like a theory — not a conspiracy, but still something we had to infer. Now the government says this is their intention in their coalition agreements, and they have been repeating it ever since.

Yesh Din noted that measures like declassifying the land registry can appear benign if not beneficial, as it promotes transparency. Can you explain why the government is taking this step and using this narrative to justify it?

When you read the government’s language around the decision to declassify the West Bank land registry, they talk about “transparency” and making everything public. And as for canceling the Jordanian law [that prohibited the sale of West Bank land, except to Palestinian residents], they claim it’s in the interest of “equality.” But this is ridiculous, because in the context of occupation, we know who these measures will serve.

Now, it’s not like the settlers don’t already have good ties with the Civil Administration [the bureaucratic arm of Israel’s occupation]. But still, the classification of the registry has made things a bit harder for them. Once it’s out in the open, it can be really problematic for Palestinians. Making this information public can expose Palestinians to privacy violations, harassment, or intimidation. Personal ownership data could be used to extort or otherwise threaten property owners whose names appear in the registry.

It’s also a big opportunity for forgery of land acquisitions in the West Bank, something we’ve seen before. For example, there were forgeries of land purchases in Amona, showing that settlers had bought land from Palestinians, but it turned out that the Palestinians were either dead or not in a position to sell.

The government just approved a proposal to register large areas of the West Bank as “state property,” for the first time since 1967. How do you view this move in the context of the six measures announced last week?

Like many things related to the West Bank and the Israeli occupation, especially land issues, this may sound bureaucratic, complicated, and even boring. But it’s a game changer.

Close to a year ago, the cabinet decided to renew land registration in the West Bank, the system that allows land to be officially registered as private property or state land. Before 1967, the Jordanians ran a land registration process in the West Bank that allowed people who had cultivated land for many years to register it in their names.

After the occupation began, Israel froze this process, and rightly so. One central reason is that land registration is permanent — it creates irreversible, long-term changes, which are not allowed under international law in a situation of occupation, which is supposed to be temporary.

There were additional reasons as well: Many Palestinian landowners were absentees and thus unable to register their land, and the existing records held by the Civil Administration are very partial and incomplete. So that can lead to registries that are seriously inaccurate and the denial of legitimate property rights. And we’re talking about a huge amount of land — around 60 percent of Area C is not registered.

For years, settler organizations have lobbied to lift the freeze and to renew land registration. That alone is telling: If the settler movement lobbies for something, you can safely assume it will benefit them. There had already been a lot of progress toward reversing the ban under previous governments, but this latest cabinet decision made it unmistakably clear that this is where we’re going, and the implementation can now move forward quickly.

If registration is renewed now, it will be done under Israeli control. Palestinians will not have representation in the decisive bodies, and based on everything we know about Israeli land policy, the process will systematically favor settlements over Palestinians. If you look at land allocation historically, less than 1 percent of land allocated by Israel has gone to Palestinians, while vast areas have been allocated to settlements. What Israel calls “state land” is, in practice, treated as settlement land. So there is no reason to assume that private land registration will be handled differently.

Ynet reported that Israel’s defense establishment supported nearly all of the cabinet’s West Bank measures, with the lone exception being a recommendation to delay the transfer of building and planning authorities in Hebron (including the Cave of the Patriarchs/Ibrahimi Mosque) until after Ramadan — not opposition in principle.

Have you seen any meaningful pushback from Israel’s political echelon, legal institutions, the security establishment, or the attorney general?

I think in the past there was much more pushback on these issues from the army and the military command. But that isn’t the case anymore.

Today, the military commander in the West Bank [Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, who heads the Central Command], in my view, is very pro-annexation. Or at least, he’s not doing anything to stop it. Even if there are officers who think some of these steps might “rock the boat,” those are not the dominant voices.

The broader context is important. We now have Smotrich inside the Defense Ministry, and [Defense Minister Israel] Katz leading this push, alongside lawmakers like [Settlement and National Missions Minister Orit] Strock. They understand that the window of opportunity may be shrinking. They don’t know what will happen after the elections, so they need to move fast.

Unlike many other ministers and political figures in Israel, these people actually have an ideology. This isn’t only populism. Controlling the West Bank — and Gaza — is at the core of their worldview. They are trying to create as many irreversible steps as possible. Smotrich calls it “changing the system’s DNA,” and he’s right.

You can link this back to Smotrich’s “Decisive Plan” from 2017 and the map he presented a few months ago, [where Israel would] annex 82 percent of the West Bank — leaving Palestinian population centers as disconnected islands without access to agricultural land that many families rely on for their livelihood.

How do you foresee this playing out with the Supreme Court? Do you think the recent cabinet decisions are an attempt to bypass the court’s 2020 decision to strike down the 2017 Regularization Law, which allowed Israel to expropriate private Palestinian lands in the West Bank for settlements?

Some of these decisions — and the one regarding land registry — are essentially meant to bypass the court’s decision to strike down the Regularization Law. Others are more like evolved versions of the law.

As for the courts, I don’t know. A few months ago, Yesh Din — together with fellow Israeli civil society organizations ACRI, Bimkom, and HaMoked — filed a petition challenging the renewal of the land registry because of the reasons I mentioned earlier. We argued that this is a dramatic annexation measure.

Two weeks ago, the court rejected the petition, claiming it was premature. Basically what the ruling said is that a cabinet decision alone is not yet a practical step, and that no individual rights have been violated so far. So in other words, they told us, “Come back once the policy has been implemented and people are already suffering from it.”

So that you understand the frustrating context, in 2024 we filed another petition challenging the transfer of powers from the military to civilian officials under Smotrich. That petition was also rejected. One judge said that after two or three years since the transfer of power was made, “The horses have already left the barn.” So on the one hand we’re told it’s too early; on the other, we’re told it’s too late.

As we learned from the latest ruling, we can’t really go to court immediately after a cabinet decision. Basically, we need to wait for implementation — for example, orders by the military commander, or for the moment when they actually begin operating the registry. Each step will have to be challenged separately.

If you look at decades of rulings since 1967, the courts have generally approved — or avoided deciding against — almost any policy the Israeli government wanted to implement in the West Bank. So I don’t have high expectations.

That said, the courts can still be a useful tool to delay some steps, and maybe to make some measures less harmful. And in individual cases, you can sometimes win and protect someone’s rights, which matters. But you can’t represent every Palestinian in court. So overall, I’m not very optimistic.

We don’t have anyone in government who will oppose these measures. Some opposition members understand what’s happening, but they’re powerless to oppose it. But still, some steps can be reversed — if the next government decides it wants to reverse them.

The land registry, for example, is permanent, but they won’t be able to register all the unregistered land before the elections. They need to set up the bodies and institutions. They have to publicize the process, allow people to submit claims, check aerial photos and documents, determine whether land was cultivated and by whom. It’s not a one-day process, and in theory, the next government could freeze it again.

A lot of the steps they’re taking are reversible, but you would need a coalition willing to roll back annexation measures and move toward a political solution — dismantling the occupation in favor of a future that’s secure and respects human rights for everyone.

Declassifying the land registry and allowing Palestinians to sell land directly to Israelis is also linked to this idea of privatized annexation. We know most settlers aren’t expressly ideological: Many are secular, middle-class Israelis who want cheaper housing, a yard, a view, cheaper groceries…

Education is cheaper. There are tax benefits. There’s lots of reasons.

Right — it can be a very comfortable existence. So if Israel has “thrown open the doors to the Judean and Samarian real estate markets,” as right-wing Israeli journalist Amit Segal wrote, how do you see this reshaping the settlement project, including participation by “ordinary Israelis” who are not messianic or ultranationalist? What do you expect happens next if this privatized land market expands?

Smotrich talks about doubling the settler population, from about half a million to a million in five years. And many of the plans this government is pushing are designed to attract people to the West Bank — improving roads, making commuting easier, improving cellular reception, and other reforms meant to raise quality of life.

On the ground, I don’t think we’re seeing that kind of growth. Settlers take up a lot of space in Israeli public discourse, and they’ve moved closer to the consensus in government and the Knesset. But that doesn’t necessarily reflect where the public is, which I think is mostly indifferent. The main migration we see is Haredi communities moving for cheap housing which is, as you said, financial, not ideological.

What we see more of is increased violence from settlers, which is strongly criticized by center and even center-right figures within Israeli society, and more land dispossession through farming outposts. This form of settlement doesn’t require many people — just one or two families, maybe some volunteers, is enough to take over huge areas by force.

So could these measures still be consequential by facilitating land acquisition and development?

Yes. I’m just not sure it will significantly enlarge the population of Israelis willing to live there. Settlers may own more land privately if the registry opens. And the land acquisition through purchases will expand. But it doesn’t necessarily mean there will be more Israelis living there.

Speaking of farming outposts, how should we understand the recent cabinet decisions in the context of surging settler violence? Are they separate phenomena, or do the former enable the latter?

I think they work together — like two hands. You have the hand of the government pushing structural and legal changes and removing obstacles to take over land. And then you have what’s happening on the ground: taking land by force. And there is no real law enforcement against settler violence. Ninety-four percent of cases are closed without charges.

Then there’s the material support from the government. [Settlers] receive gear: night-vision equipment, off-road vehicles, and what they call “defense packages,” including weapons distributed by [Itamar] Ben Gvir’s National Security Ministry. We see the military providing protection to settlers, accompanying them while they attack Palestinians and doing nothing to stop it. And that’s in the best-case scenario.

You alluded earlier to Oslo, and how many of these decisions undermine or cancel key parts of the agreement — including the Hebron Protocol. Where does Oslo stand now?

I’m not an expert on Oslo, but I’ll say a few things. First, the division [of the West Bank] into Areas A, B, and C was an interim agreement. It wasn’t designed to last for 30 years.

And for many Israelis — especially in government, but also more broadly — Area C is now treated as part of Israel, or a future “Land of Israel.” But under Oslo, Area C was supposed to remain under Israeli control temporarily until a final agreement, where it would become part of a Palestinian state.

So in that sense, what we’ve seen is a long regression from what was agreed in Oslo. It’s not new, but every step makes it harder to return to any meaningful framework where Oslo could be implemented.

Legally speaking, Oslo still holds. There’s security coordination between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli military, and in other aspects too. But that’s basically it. Politically, Smotrich is very explicit: He wants to kill not only Oslo, but the very notion that there could ever be a Palestinian state.

Do you expect a formal declaration of annexation, given how openly the government expresses its intentions?

No. They’d love to, but Trump was very clear, so unless he changes his mind, I don’t see a formal declaration happening. But they don’t need one. They’re doing it through facts on the ground.

Maybe in the future they’ll officially apply Israeli law. For now, they maintain an appearance. Take the cabinet decisions: They didn’t specify implementation, but my guess — and I think it’s a safe bet — is [that it will happen] through military orders, which preserves the appearance of a military occupation. If the territory were formally annexed, there would be no need for military law.

So if the military carries out the decision, it creates plausible deniability?

Exactly. If you look at the laws of occupation under international law, they were designed around the idea of trusteeship. The occupier is supposed to maintain the territory temporarily until it can be returned through a peaceful agreement. The temporary sovereign is supposed to consider the benefit of the land and its people, and avoid long-term changes.

Everything Israel is doing violates that, especially when the government makes decisions and then orders the military commander to legislate in a way that serves Israeli civilians, not Palestinians.

On Tuesday, Smotrich said the next Israeli government should “encourage the migration” of Palestinians from the West Bank. How does this statement fit into the settler right’s broader agenda? And do you see Trump intervening in any meaningful way, for example in connection to the Abraham Accords?

It’s very hard to predict what Trump will do. I think the Abraham Accords are relevant, but also the future of Gaza. These issues are connected now. If Trump wants Arab countries — who oppose annexation — to move forward with normalization and rebuilding Gaza, he might be more active.

But since these [latest] government decisions are too bureaucratic, I doubt Trump views them as annexation. Unless there’s a formal declaration, something very explicit, I don’t see him acting.

As for Smotrich, he is a Jewish supremacist — a dangerous man who is determined to turn Israel into a fully fledged apartheid state, regardless of the implications for Israelis, Palestinians, or the wider region. But a lot depends on the [Israeli] elections. Smotrich, Ben Gvir, and Strock are getting everything they want right now, and if that changes, it would already be an improvement.

I hope at least we’ll get a government that is less aggressive, where the settler lobby has less influence. We’ve never had a government that truly opposed taking over Palestinian land or prioritized Palestinian rights. But we’ve learned there’s bad — and then there’s much worse.

The post Has Israel Crossed the Threshold of Annexation in the West Bank? appeared first on Left Voice.

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