Israel’s security cabinet approved a package of decisions that significantly expands the powers of Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank and makes it easier for Jewish settlers to purchase land in Palestinian territory.
These steps mark another element of the ultra-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy aimed at tightening control over the West Bank—a territory Palestinians view as the foundation of a future state and that has been under Israeli military occupation for more than half a century.
Israel’s finance minister and leader of the ultranationalists, Bezalel Smotrich, who has long called for the annexation of the region, said the decisions would “fundamentally change the legal and civil reality” in the West Bank and that the government was thereby “burying the idea of a Palestinian state.”
The decisions approved on Sunday revoke a regulation that had barred private Jewish individuals from acquiring land in the West Bank and remove Palestinian representatives from the process of issuing building permits in a Jewish settlement in Hebron, including projects on a site considered holy by both Muslims and Jews.
In addition, Israeli authorities are granted the power to apply measures—including property demolitions—against individuals deemed responsible for environmental damage, violations related to water resources, and harm to archaeological sites in areas formally administered by the Palestinian Authority.
In a joint statement with Defense Minister Israel Katz, Smotrich also announced the reinstatement of a land-acquisition commission that will “proactively” purchase plots in the West Bank.
Palestine’s foreign ministry described the decisions as a “de facto annexation of Palestinian land” and urged US President Donald Trump, who last year said he opposed the annexation of the West Bank, to intervene. “The ministry condemns Israel’s desperate attempts to impose a fait accompli through colonial settlement and by altering the legal reality and status of occupied Palestinian land,” the statement said.
The measures extend a series of decisions by Netanyahu’s government—in which ultranationalist settlers such as Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wield significant influence—aimed at entrenching Israeli control over the West Bank.
Since coming to power in 2022, the government has sharply accelerated the expansion of settlements—illegal under international law—and significantly increased the scale of land seizures. It has also retroactively “legalized” settler outposts that had previously been considered illegal even under Israeli law.
The Israeli human rights organization Peace Now, which monitors settlement activity in the West Bank, said the decisions approved on Sunday constitute a “direct violation of international agreements to which Israel has committed itself,” including the Oslo Accords, which temporarily divided the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C.
Under those arrangements, the Palestinian Authority was to administer Areas A and B, with Israel retaining security control in Area B. Area C remained under Israeli control and was to be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction as part of a final agreement, potentially involving territorial swaps.
The transfer never took place, however, and successive Israeli governments continued to expand settlements. Since the current cabinet took office, there has also been a documented rise in settler violence, which has forced dozens of Palestinian communities to abandon their land in Area C.
The cabinet’s decision, Peace Now said, reflects an effort to “dismantle every possible barrier to large-scale land seizure in the West Bank.”