The Israeli military has given religious settler and minister Bezalel Smotrich increased legal control over the occupied West Bank
News Desk - The Cradle
The Israeli military announced the transfer of responsibility for dozens of bylaws at the Civil Administration on its website on 29 May. The Civil Administration governs the West Bank under the military's direction.
Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, said: “The bottom line is that [for] anyone who thought the question of annexation was foggy, this order should end any doubts. What this order does is transfers vast areas of administrative power from the military commander to Israeli civilians working for the government.”
The transfer will allow Smotrich and his civilian appointees from his religious settler movement to further remove domestic legal obstacles to the theft of Palestinian land for Jewish settlement in the West Bank.
It will also allow Smotrich to further limit Palestinians from building new homes on their own land, which are needed as their population grows.
Israel captured the West Bank and militarily occupied it in 1967. It is home to millions of indigenous Palestinian Christians and Muslims.
Acquiring territory through war and establishing foreign settlements therein is illegal under international law.
The Guardian notes that Israeli politicians have long sought to find ways to annex the occupied Palestinian West Bank and make it formally part of Israel.
The transfer of laws, which received little attention in the Israeli press, follows a years-long campaign by pro-settlement politicians to acquire legal powers in the West Bank previously held by the Israeli military as the occupying power.
The laws cover everything from building regulations to the administration of agriculture, forestry, parks, and bathing locations.
Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst for Israel–Palestine at Crisis Group, said, “The big story is that this is no longer ‘creeping annexation’ or ‘de facto annexation,’ it is actual annexation.”
“This is the legalization [and] normalization of a long-term policy. Smotrich is basically re-establishing the way in which the occupation works by taking a large part out of the hands of the military,” Zonszein added.
Smotrich, a leader in the religious settler movement, became finance minister and a minister in the defense ministry as part of a coalition agreement that brought Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu back to power in late 2022.
He quickly began calling for the annexation of the West Bank, as well as ethnically cleansing Palestinians from it to clear the way for additional Jewish settlement.
Smotrich has called for the destruction of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the strip, and its annexation as well.
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