Israel Gives Itself More Control Over Occupied West Bank

 

Israel Gives Itself More Control Over Occupied West Bank

 

The security cabinet took actions that make it easier for Jews to buy land in the territory. Critics say the changes violate the Oslo Accords and international law and accelerate attempts to annex the land.

 

David M. Halbfinger Isabel Kershner

By David M. Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner

Reporting from Jerusalem

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/world/middleeast/israel-settlements-west-bank.html

Feb. 9, 2026

 

Israel’s government has taken unilateral steps to give itself greater control over the occupied West Bank, challenging President Trump’s opposition to Israeli annexation of the territory in a move widely considered a violation of international law.

 

The measures, which make it easier for Jewish settlers to buy land and undercut the Palestinian Authority in parts of the West Bank that it administers, appear to flout important agreements that Israel signed under the Oslo peace process decades ago.

 

The changes were made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet at a closed-door meeting on Sunday. By enhancing Israel’s control over West Bank territory the Palestinians want for a future state, they effectively advance the cause of annexation by degrees — continuing a strategy that the government has been pursuing for years.

 

But they come after Mr. Trump’s recent, explicit rejection of annexation, his acknowledgment of the Palestinians’ aspirations to statehood — made explicit in his peace plan for Gaza — and his support for political talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

 

Mr. Netanyahu, who is set to travel to Washington to meet with Mr. Trump on Wednesday, did not announce the changes. Instead, they were detailed after Sunday’s meeting by two government ministers who oversee West Bank policy.

 

One was Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, who has pushed through a host of other measures extending Israel’s footprint in the West Bank.

 

“We are deepening our roots in all parts of the Land of Israel and burying the idea of a Palestinian state,” Mr. Smotrich said in a statement.

 

Mr. Netanyahu is presiding over the most right-wing government in the country’s history. It has hardened its stance against the Palestinians since the Hamas-led attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which set off a two-year war in Gaza.

 

With international attention largely focused there, Israel has undertaken an unbridled expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which is under Israeli military rule. Military operations also have resulted in the biggest displacement of Palestinian civilians there since the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

 

Eight Arab and Muslim countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, denounced the latest changes in a statement on Monday. They accused Israel of “accelerating attempts at its illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people.”

 

Hussein al-Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority’s No. 2 official, called on the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the U.N. Security Council to condemn the moves and demand “that Israel retract them immediately.”

 

And a spokesman for the U.N. secretary general, Antonio Guterres, urged Israel to reverse the moves, reiterating that all its settlements in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, and their associated infrastructure, are “in flagrant violation of international law.”

 

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The new actions mainly ease the way for land purchases by Jewish settlers, beginning with the repeal of a pre-1967 law banning the sale of West Bank property except to local, meaning Palestinian, residents.

 

Critics say this could allow well-financed settlement groups, by buying property deep inside areas the Palestinians want to include in a future state, to drive Israel’s policy in the West Bank, because the military is obligated to protect Israelis wherever they are.

 

The security cabinet also repealed a requirement for a “transaction permit” before closing a land purchase. These permits had helped crack down on forgeries or fraud — a common occurrence when Israelis want to buy property from Palestinians who don’t want to sell it. Applying for a permit also allowed the Defense Ministry to reject purchases of property in sensitive locations.

 

Another change that could have serious consequences for Palestinians who do sell land to Israelis was the opening of the land registry in the West Bank for public review — a key goal of the settlement movement.

 

Until now, land records have been sealed, making it difficult for would-be purchasers to track down absentee owners. With sales to Jews prohibited by a Palestinian Authority law that carries the death penalty, keeping land records sealed also could protect Palestinian sellers from prosecution or worse.

 

The new Israeli measures also disempower the Palestinian Authority in other important ways.

 

The Oslo Accords gave the authority administrative control over about 40 percent of the West Bank. The changes will put even those areas under the control of Israeli enforcement agencies — with the power to demolish Palestinian structures over violations — when it comes to heritage and archaeological sites, environmental hazards and water offenses.

 

Hagit Ofran of Peace Now, an advocacy group that opposes and monitors West Bank settlement expansion, called the decision to authorize Israeli demolitions in those areas “draconian.” Israel could find any excuse to carry out such demolitions, she said.

 

In Hebron, where a small but aggressive Jewish settlement exists at the center of the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank, the security cabinet shifted control over planning and construction in the area to the Israeli military.

 

Until now, those functions have been the purview of the city’s Palestinian municipal government. The shift could allow settlement expansion and other changes at the Cave of the Patriarchs, a holy site for both Muslims and Jews, without Palestinian input, critics said.

 

Similarly, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, a new agency was set up to manage Rachel’s Tomb, which will allow the government to appropriate money to improve the site and a Jewish seminary next to it.

 

Much was unclear about Sunday’s changes, including whether they would survive legal challenges.

 

Michael Milshtein, an analyst and a former head of Palestinian affairs in Israeli military intelligence, suggested that it may have been a stealthy way for the government to promote Mr. Smotrich’s annexation agenda while trying to avoid open confrontation with Mr. Trump.

 

“I’d define it as taking steps toward annexation without saying the word annexation,” Mr. Milshtein said.

 

Once military orders are signed, as required, to give the decisions legislative standing in the occupied territory, anti-settlement groups will probably challenge the moves in Israel’s Supreme Court, Ms. Ofran said. But she added that the chances of overturning them were slim.

 

With a general election scheduled by Oct. 27 at the latest, Mr. Smotrich appears to be using what could be his final months in office to do as much as possible to further his goal of sealing Israeli control over the West Bank.

 

He has openly called for applying Israeli sovereignty there and has pursued policies that his supporters and critics alike say amount to de facto annexation, in the face of stiff international opposition. His Religious Zionism party has a small constituency and may not receive enough votes to pass the electoral threshold and enter the next Parliament, according to opinion polls.

 

 

Experts said the security cabinet’s decisions were a clear violation of the Oslo Accords.

 

International law says that an occupying country can’t change existing laws except for security reasons or the benefit of the local population. Abolishing or changing the law on land purchases cannot be described as benefiting the Palestinian population, said Ms. Ofran of Peace Now.

 

“As long as international law defines the West Bank as occupied territory,” Mr. Milshtein added, “it is not a place where Israel can do whatever it wants.”

 

Right-wing supporters of the government’s moves praised them.

 

Yisrael Ganz, chairman of the Yesha Council, the umbrella group representing the West Bank settlements, said lifting the ban on Jews buying land ended a form of discrimination. Blurring any distinction between Israel proper and the occupied territory, he asserted that opening the land registries “restores transparency, legal certainty, and the ability to act lawfully.”

 

He also described the measures to curb environmental pollution from waste burning and other hazards as “not a political issue, but a public health issue.”

 

David M. Halbfinger is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. He also held that post from 2017 to 2021. He was the politics editor from 2021 to 2025.

 

Isabel Kershner, a senior correspondent for The Times in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.