Israeli leaders vowed on Monday to keep the country's conscript military free of politics after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave far-right coalition partners increased control over security forces and settlements in the occupied West Bank.
While Netanyahu's conservative Likud party retained the Defense Ministry, which runs the authority that coordinates policy in the West Bank, it ceded some settlement policymaking to hardline politician Bezalel Smotrich. Ultranationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir commands border police as national security minister.
