Editorial | Don't Look Away: Israel's Annexation of the West Bank Is Already Here

A Palestinian flag flies in the village of Beita south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank near an Israeli watchtower erected in the Eviatar settlement outpost, last year.Credit: AFP/JAAFAR ASHTIYEH

At a time when the Israeli right has adopted the "Trump vision" of transferring two million Gazans for the sake of creating an American Riviera and the Israel Defense Forces is preparing the ground there for a supposedly temporary extended stay on which the infrastructure of renewed settlement is being established, annexation of the West Bank is no longer moving at a snail's pace. It has risen to its feet and is proceeding apace.

The annexation is already here. By the time it is formally declared, it will already be too late to stop it – the process will have been completed.

That is the modus operandi of the settlers and the government – to do everything short of a formal declaration, knowing that no one is paying attention and that no one really cares.

What is happening on the ground is clear to anyone who travels in the West Bank and is even more clear to those following the activities of Bezalel Smotrich and other members of the coalition. At the heart of the revolution, now in full swing, is a drastic increase in the number of building permits in settlements, the transfer of West Bank administration from the army to the settlers and their supporters, designation of state land at a dizzying pace and draconian enforcement against illegal Palestinian construction.

Many of these take place under the radar because, in theory, they involve bureaucratic steps – the establishment of the settlement administration, the transfer of authority out of the army's Civil Administration, passage of a law that will make it easier for Jews to buy West Bank land and steps aimed at strengthening the settlements economically.

The latter is being accomplished, among other things, by a law that will entitle the settlements to municipal tax revenues from industrial and commercial districts inside Israel proper, and one that will deem the South Hebron Hill settlements a part of the Negev. All are aimed at the single goal of ensuring the settlements get more government money.

The fact that these bills have not yet been approved by the Knesset has not prevented the coalition from pouring millions of shekels into the settlements in various ways. Such steps are no longer done in secret, but proudly and openly – for example, when Smotrich and Orit Strock recently participated in a ceremony creating a team of rangers to serve the South Hebron Hill farm outposts.

It is no coincidence that the farm outposts throughout the West Bank also play an important role in the actual annexation by working to empty Area C of Palestinians and push them into the cities.

The settlers in the Knesset and the settlers in the territories are engaged in a pincer movement, taking over the state institutions most relevant to the West Bank, shifting budgets and giving increasing legitimacy to the hilltop youth, those who are actually doing the work of expulsion on the ground. As such, when the official annexation comes, there will be as few Palestinians as possible there.

We must not look away. We must not think that annexation is merely hypothetical. We must look directly at the reality on the ground. When we do, we see that annexation is all but here and that the means of making it happen are being prepared.