Behind the fog of war and the obliteration of Gaza, Israel’s far-right cabinet has escalated the annexation of the West Bank to Israel.
New York (Special to Informed Comment, Feature) – Just days ago, the Israeli parliament Knesset passed a motion for the agenda to “apply sovereignty” to the West Bank. Though largely declarative, the motion is paving the way to a wider debate on West Bank annexation in the Knesset plenum or in committees.
The motion was initiated by MKs Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionism), one of the architects of Israel’s move from secular and democratic state to Jewish autocracy; Oded Forer (Yisrael Beitenu), a revisionist Zionist and hardliner; Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit), a Kahanite far-right extremist famous for her vow “Kill the Arabs”; and Dan Illouz (Likud), the Canadian-born harsh-right supporter of a Jewish neoliberal autocracy.
The vote passed 71-13 in the Knesset. Afterwards, Illouz declared, “The message is unequivocal: Judea and Samaria are not a bargaining chip. The time has come for sovereignty.”
Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967. It is the longest military occupation in modern history. Following the destruction of the Gaza Strip and efforts at its ethnic cleansing, the status quo is changing in the West Bank, which is being incorporated into Israel.
As I show in The Fall of Israel , this process has escalated dramatically since summer 2024.
From occupation toward illegal annexation
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN General Assembly, and the UN Security Council – indeed, most of the international community – regard Israel as an occupying power. Repudiating the condemnation, Israel has argued that the West Bank does not fall under the definition of “occupied territory” by international law.
In this quasi-Orwellian view, the West Bank is a “disputed territory” since the previous occupying power (Jordan) lacked an internationally recognized claim to it. In light of the demise of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I and the end of the British Mandate in 1948, Israel argues that no international actor has superior legal claim to the West Bank.
Nonetheless, according to international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention, “the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
For decades, international public sentiment echoed these legal and effective realities. Perhaps one reason for the Gaza War is the fact that, even prior to October 7, such voices grew more vocal. In December 2022, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) requested the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an advisory opinion on the legal status and consequences of Israel’s control of the occupied Palestinian territories, thereby pushing the definition debacle over annexation to a boiling point.
The UNGA resolution addressed two possible classifications for Israel’s control of the territory: annexation and unlawful occupation. But what qualified as annexation? Had Israel already annexed the West Bank or was the prolonged control over the territory still below the “annexation threshold,” pending its formal declaration of annexation?
Presumably that’s why the Israeli far-right moved fast in early 2023, after its election triumph. Creating “facts on the ground” is an old tactic of expansion adopted by Israel’s first PM David Ben-Gurion already during the border wars of 1949-56.
Smotrich‘s push, Netanyahu’s blessing
In the far-right Israeli government, the first to float the annexation plan was Bezazel Smotrich, Netanyahu’s minister of Finance and Defense. Like other far-right settlers, Smothrich himself has long resided in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which is illegal under international law.
As the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, he has dragged the once-moderate party toward Messianic extremism and Jewish supremacy doctrines. As a self-proclaimed “fascist” and “racist,” Smotrich supports and has contributed to the settlement expansion in the West Bank, while shunning Palestinian statehood – with the support of American military aid and ultra-conservative American-Jewish funds.
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Ambassador David Friedman, an ultra-conservative revisionist Zionist, and US ambassador to Israel in the first Trump term, and the far-right Messianic fascist Smotrich in fall 2017. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic. Source: US Embassy Tel Aviv.. Via Wikimedia.
When Netanyahu invited Smotrich into his government giving him vital portfolios, he purposely allowed the fox to take over the henhouse. As minister with powers in the occupied Palestinian territories, Smotrich has led the quasi-covert efforts to annex territories in the West Bank, first as a fait accompli, then by the force of law.
In 2020, President Trump was willing to allow Israel to annex 85% of the West Bank and leave Palestinians just 15% of historical Palestine. To Israel’s Messianic far-right, that was grossly inadequate. They wanted full sovereignty.
The prohibition on the annexation of territory is a cornerstone of modern international law. However, since annexation has not been clearly defined, it is uncertain what would qualify as annexation, while a formal declaration by the annexing state clearly would do so.
Annexation de facto and de jure
When Smotrich first floated his plan in February 2023, some Israeli jurists warned that transferring powers from the military would amount to annexation in law. Since the existing ideas of de facto annexation and unlawful occupation were framed in such a manner that by the time the situation crossed a critical threshold, the status quo had already become annexation de jure. So, when Smotrich moved ahead with the transfer of powers, the jurists described the order as “a step toward de jure annexation – even though Israel may not have officially annexed the territories.”
Obviously, official annexation was bound to result in an international backlash, even vocal US protests. As a result, the Messianic far-right led by Smotrich chose to use Israeli democracy to subvert the status quo. The fog of the Gaza War served to divert attention away from Smotrich’s new and critical appointments, aiming at the incorporation of the West Bank into the pre-1967 Israel.
Officially, the Biden administration opposed annexation policies, yet Smotrich’s administrative decisions were largely ignored as internal Israeli matters. Preoccupied with the election year and the international spillovers of the Gaza War, the Biden White House deliberately looked the other way. The West Bank was not the administration’s priority.
In the Trump administration, the West Bank and Palestinian concerns are seen as utterly marginal. When Gaza is devastated and the West Bank is taken over by the Israelis, some members of the Trump cabinet ee this as a fait accompli; others, as divine guidance; but all benefit from the generous support by the Israel lobby.
The far-right links and revisionist US funds
In the West Bank, the governance of civilian affairs used to be under the authority of the Civil Administration and the military. As a result, Smotrich’s pro-settler Religious Zionism Party could not exercise political control over the settlements. But there was another way.
These efforts moved to a new phase in April 2024, when Bezalel Smotrich, as Netanyahu’s minister, appointed his ideological ally, Hillel Roth, as the deputy in the civil administration with responsibility for enforcing building regulations in settlements and outposts.
Roth had studied at Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement in the northern West Bank. Both are notorious for their extremism representing the vanguard of the settlers’ retaliatory attacks against Palestinians, according to Shin Bet.
After studies in this racist environment, Roth served as a senior official in the notorious Honenu organization, with lawyers like Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the racist Israeli far-right, providing legal representation to far-right Israelis in ethno-nationalist and anti-Arab crimes.
Half of Honenu’s money comes from the United States, including the Central Fund of Israel and violent pro-settler groups, run out of the Marcus Brothers Textiles in midtown Manhattan.
How the IDF gave in to Smotrich’s violent settlers
All of this changed in late May 2024, when the outgoing head of the IDF Central Command, Maj. Gen Yehuda Fuchs, signed an order permitting the head of the Civil Administration to delegate his areas of authority to the newly created position of the “deputy head” of the Civil Administration. In this highly controversial “reorganization,” Roth replaced Fuchs.
In a highly controversial move, the IDF thereby quietly transferred effective responsibility from the civil administration – the Israeli body governing in the West Bank – to officials led by Smotrich at the defense ministry. In a private pro-settler event, Smotrich acknowledged that a separate civilian system “will be easier to swallow in the international and legal context. So that they won’t say that we are doing annexation here.”
It was also a payback of sorts. In February 2023, Huwara, a Palestinian town located in Nablus in the West Bank, was rampaged by hundreds of Israeli settlers, who torched Palestinian businesses and houses, leaving one dead and some 100 Palestinians injured. As a result, Maj. Gen. Fuchs described the rampage as “a pogrom done by outlaws.” He deliberately used the term referring to mob attacks against Jews in Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century.
Subsequently, Fuchs himself was targeted for assassination by the Messianic far-right settlers, according to Shin Bet.
File photo of satellite image of Palestinian West Bank, Public Domain, via getarchive.net
Maj Gen Yehuda Fuchs, the departing chief of the Israeli military’s central command, condemned settler violence in the occupied West Bank.
Outgoing Israeli general condemns settler violence in occupied West Bank
Circumventing the military regime, Roth can expedite settlement approvals and prevent enforcement against unlawful settlement construction. The revised administrative structure allow Smotrich, Roth and their far-right allies and violent settler groups to prioritize settlement construction deep in the West Bank.
Now, as the Israeli Policy Forum points out, outlaws are in charge of the West Bank, which has been “Judeaized” for years.
West Bank and Gaza: Judea and Samaria, and Azza
What is critical in this ongoing shift from occupation to annexation, which is taking place in full view of international observers who continue to ignore it, is the underlying structural transformation.
In view of the Messianic far-right and many center-right parties, there is a common denominator among the highly controversial 2018 Jewish nation-state bill that undermined the idea of a democratic and ecular Jewish state; the battle for the proposed judicial reforms, which have been protested by hundreds of thousands Israelis and which since early 2023 have been moving Israel from secular democracy toward Jewish autocracy; the Gaza War and the parallel administrative changes in the West Bank since 2024.
The common foundation of these transformational far-right forces is the seizure of the historical opportunity to annex the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza – which the Netanyahu cabinet recognizes mainly as Judea and Samaria, and Azza (Hebrew for Gaza).
After all, why talk about a “two-state solution” if the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories can be ethnically cleansed and the West Bank is effectively annexed to Israel proper?
That’s the solution of Israel’s Messianic far-right: Eradicate the adversary, eliminate the problem.
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