Hebron’s Palestinian municipality held planning authority over the city for nearly 30 years. Israel revoked it this month, then swiftly approved a yeshiva in the Old City — redrawing who controls the city’s land and future.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has vowed to wrest control of the ancient Solomon’s Pools site from the Palestinian Authority. Palestinians are responding by reclaiming the site and resisting Israeli efforts to seize more of the West Bank.
As countries around the world recognize a Palestinian state, Israel is doing everything it can to prevent the possibility of any future state. One way it plans on doing that is through financial strangulation.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich released a map proposing to annex over 80% of the West Bank. He’s not far off from the rest of the Israeli political establishment — even the “pragmatic” opposition.
Israel is reviving a settlement plan that would annex a strategic tract of land east of Jerusalem and effectively split the West Bank in two, “burying” the possibility of any future Palestinian state in the territory.
The Knesset’s motion supporting the annexation of the West Bank signals Israel’s intention of formalizing what it has already been doing at an accelerated pace since October 7 — establishing total Israeli control over Palestinian land.
Israel is using the war on Iran to further its colonization and annexation of the West Bank, turning Palestinian communities into caged enclaves.
Israel is expanding its “Iron Wall” offensive in the West Bank as it approves plans to separate the northern West Bank from the south. The plan is an accelerated prelude to Israel’s expected annexation of the West Bank.
In January, far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir left the Israeli government in protest of the Gaza ceasefire. Now that the genocide has fully restarted, Ben-Gvir is back and his shared interests with Benjamin Netanyahu have never been clearer.
Israel’s ongoing assault on the West Bank is not to wipe out the Palestinian resistance. It is to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homes and set the stage for annexation.