The Israeli military has quietly handed over significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants working for the far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich.
An order posted by the Israel Defense Forces on its website on 29 May transfers responsibility for dozens of bylaws at the Civil Administration – the Israeli body governing in the West Bank – from the military to officials led by Smotrich at the defence ministry.
Smotrich and his allies have long seen control of the Civil Administration, or significant parts of it, as a means of extending Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. Their ultimate goal is direct control by central government and its ministries. The transfer reduces the likelihood of legal checks on settlement expansion and development.
Israeli politicians have long sought to find ways to permanently seize, or annex, the occupied West Bank, which it captured in 1967 and where millions of Palestinians live.
Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, said: “The bottom line is that [for] anyone who thought the question of annexation was foggy, this order should end any doubts. What this order does is transfers vast areas of administrative power from the military commander to Israeli civilians working for the government.”
It is the latest coup for Smotrich, who became finance minister and a minister in the defence ministry after a coalition agreement between his far-right political party and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.
The Civil Administration is principally responsible for planning and construction in Area C of the West Bank – the 60% of the Occupied Palestinian Territories under full Israeli administrative and security control – as well as enforcement against unauthorised construction, whether by Israeli settlers or by Palestinians.
The transfer of laws, which was largely unremarked upon in Israel, follows a years-long campaign by pro-settlement politicians to accrue many of the legal powers previously wielded by the military chain of command.
The laws cover everything from building regulations to the administration of agriculture, forestry, parks and bathing locations. Lawyers have long warned that transferring them from military to political control would risk bringing Israel into conflict with its responsibilities under international law. After entering government, Smotrich moved quickly to approve thousands of new settlement homes, legalise previously unauthorised wildcat outposts, and make it more difficult for Palestinians to build homes and move around.
Reports in the Israeli media say US officials have privately discussed the possibility of imposing sanctions on Smotrich over his destabilising impact on the West Bank, where he lives in a settlement that is illegal under international law.
Netanyahu has become more reliant on the support of Smotrich and other far-right elements of his coalition government since the moderate former defence minister Benny Gantz quit Israel’s emergency war cabinet in a row over strategy in the Gaza war and how to bring home Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Smotrich has made no secret of his desire to carve out his own stronghold in the ministry of defence to pursue his policies, downplaying the significance as merely technical.
In April, Smotrich appointed a long-term ideological ally, Hillel Roth, as the deputy in the Civil Administration with responsibility for enforcing building regulations in settlements and outposts.
Roth is a former resident of Yitzhar, a West Bank settlement with a reputation for violence and extremism. He served as an official with Bnei Akiva, an NGO linked to Smotrich’s Religious Zionist party.
Sfard said the transfer meant legal power in the West Bank was now in the hands of “an apparatus headed by an Israeli minister … whose only interest is to advance Israeli interests”.
Equally important, Sfard said, was that although the head of the Civil Administration is an officer subordinate to the military command, Roth is a civilian who answers to Smotrich.
Sfard’s view echoes a legal opinion published by three Israeli jurists last year who warned that transferring powers from the military would amount to annexation in law, as Smotirch “considers himself committed first and foremost to advancing the interests of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, rather than the welfare of Palestinian residents”.
Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst for Israel-Palestine at Crisis Group, said: “The big story is that this is no longer ‘creeping annexation’ or ‘de facto annexation’, it is actual annexation.
“This is the legalisation [and] normalisation of a long-term policy. Smotrich is basically re-establishing the way in which the occupation works by taking a large part out of the hands of the military.
“Half the people he has brought in to the defence ministry are from [the pro-settler Israeli NGO] Regavim. The same people who worked at Regavim to disposess Palestinians in Area C are now in government positions.”
