Israel took another step toward annexing the West Bank on Sunday when its government approved a proposal that will register parts of the West Bank as “state property,” which Bezalel Smotrich, the settler finance minister, said is the continuation of “the settlement revolution to control all our lands.”
This year’s olive harvest in the West Bank has been an even more violent one than most for Palestinians, and matters got so bad that even Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, condemned the violence.
The Israeli Knesset last voted on two separate bills that were seen as symbolic but intended to send the message that Israel has sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, despite the White House’s earlier rejection of such a move, and Vice President JD Vance visited that country at the time of the vote.
The Israeli government last week handed out ATVs (all-terrain vehicles) and other equipment to assist with the expanding “settler movement” in the country that has been running roughshod over the West Bank as much of the world’s attention has been focused on the genocide unfolding in Gaza.
The Israeli government last week approved an additional $274.6 million to finance a project in the occupied West Bank to connect settlements via a road system, and other infrastructure projects as the land steal in the region picks up pace.
Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, said last week that Tel Aviv plans to form a “Jewish Israeli state” in the occupied West Bank in response to what he sees as a security threat facing Israelis in the region.
Israel announced last week that it approved 22 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank to help establish Tel Aviv’s control in the region and prevent a Palestinian state.
Sigrid Kaag, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, issued a report last week that accused Israel of expanding settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and using violence to achieve its goals.
Israel will formally annex the West Bank in the “very near future—perhaps in two weeks” to kill any talk of a two-state solution and “convince some in the skeptical Arab world to reconsider financing the planned reconstruction of Gaza,” Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist posted on his Substack, citing a “well-informed Washington official.”
The Israeli military earlier this month moved to increase its control over cultural heritage sites inside the occupied West Bank and seized land at the summit of Tel Sebastia for unspecified “military needs.”