( Middle East Monitor ) – At a time when Israel and the United States are preparing to launch strikes on Iran (which may be wide strikes), we notice that Israel is taking very dangerous steps in the West Bank. The problem is that the West Bank does not receive enough media coverage, and many people do not care about what is happening there. This “distraction” and “blackout” give Israel a greater chance to move without pressure or monitoring.
Trump had spoken about an initiative for Gaza that does not include the “annexation of the West Bank,” but what is happening in practice is an American–Israeli agreement to annex the West Bank on the ground without using the word “annexation.”
But how? By expanding settlements, making plans to cut the Palestinians into separated areas, such as separating the north of the West Bank from the south, and preparing measures that completely change the reality.
In the middle of these difficult conditions, and with talk of a possible regional war, Israel is using the situation to impose a reality in the West Bank that makes it “effectively annexed,” whatever the names may be.
One of the most dangerous decisions taken by Israel is the cancellation of “Law 67”. This law prevented Palestinians from selling land, houses, and property to Israelis or Jews. Selling land to foreigners was forbidden, and the allowed sale was for a Palestinian to sell to another Palestinian. Whoever sold to Israelis faced severe penalties, and the law even stated the death penalty (although in practice it was usually long imprisonment, not actual execution).
Israel cancelled this law and said that anyone can sell their land or house to Israelis normally, without monitoring procedures or protection. More dangerous is that it removed part of the administrative authority that was in the hands of the Palestinian Authority in some areas, and it became the one holding the papers and procedures. This means the sale may become direct between settlers and Palestinians without verification that prevents fraud.
In this way, fraud can happen easily: a settler may bring a paper, write the landowner’s name and his own name, create a fake contract, and say, “I bought the land.” The procedures that protected people and prevented fraud were completely cancelled.
Not only this. Palestinian families may be forced to sell under pressure. Israel may deliberately deprive Palestinians of basic services such as garbage collection, then say the house “harms the environment” and use that as a reason to demolish it. Meaning: either you leave the house, or it will be demolished.
Then they took an even more dangerous step: there was an official list of Palestinian properties and the names of their owners, and this list was secret and settlers could not access it. Now it has been opened and accessible, and any settler can know: whose house is this and whose land is this?
Why is this very dangerous?
Because when the settler knows the owner of the house, he can pressure and threaten him in many ways:
- He may blackmail him to sell his house.
- Or he may forge a sale contract, then threaten to report to the Palestinian Authority that “this person sold his house to Israelis,” which may expose him to severe punishment or strong social rejection, even if the sale happened under coercion.
In many cases, the Palestinian does not have power to protect himself: no army, no state that protects him, and no real protection, while settlers are armed and can attack and demolish houses.
Therefore, some may be forced to give up for a small amount of money just to save their lives. It is also dangerous that these policies may create conflicts among Palestinians themselves, because the occupation tries to show the matter as if it were a “sale” between a Palestinian and a settler, thus creating problems inside Palestinian society.
There are also extremist Israeli settler groups such as the “Hilltop Youth” who attack Palestinians, burn, and steal. With the opening of ownership lists and the ease of forgery, a settler may write a contract in the owner’s name without his knowledge, then go to him and say, “Hand over the house,” and if he refuses, threaten to expose him and involve him before his community or the authorities.
File photo of Israeli settlements, 2017.
It has become clear that all these measures are not meant to give the Palestinian a “fair price” for his house or land, but rather they are “dangerous and humiliating” steps to practically annex the West Bank, far from international law, the Oslo Agreement, and all political promises.
The discussion then moves to say that this settlement project is strongly supported by Europe and the United States, and that roles are distributed: some parties say, “We object and condemn,” while on the ground annexation and expansion are being implemented.
To connect these measures with what is happening around Iran, Netanyahu is not visiting Washington only to prevent a separate American agreement with Iran, but to put the final touches on war plans, based on intelligence information and continuous coordination between Israel and the United States on all files, with annexation of the West Bank included.
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