More than 80 percent of the occupied West Bank would become part of Israel, according to a new annexation proposal drafted by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday.
The hardline Minister presented a map showing all of the West Bank as a part of Israel, including Bethlehem, the Jordan Valley, and the entire Palestinian countryside, while only six Palestinian cities — Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus, Jericho, Ramallah, and Hebron — were marked as isolated ghettoes. Smotrich said that if the Palestinian Authority (PA) opposes his plan, Israel would “uproot it like it did with Hamas.” Smotrich also called on Netanyahu to implement his proposal if he wished to “enter history as a great leader.”
On the same day as Smotrich’s presentation, Israeli forces arrested the mayor of Hebron, Tayseer Abu Sneineh. Hebron is the largest Palestinian city in the West Bank and is home to 800,000 Palestinians. Some 500 messianic Israeli settlers have been imposing their presence in the city’s old town since the 1980s, and Abu Sneineh is known for his role in a Fatah cell that planned and carried out the shooting of six Israeli and Jewish settlers in the city’s old town in 1980, locally known as the “Dabuya Operation.” After his initial arrest, Abu Sneineh was later released in a prisoner swap in 1983 alongside other members of the cell.
Abu Sneineh’s arrest came days after Israeli media outlets reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was considering the establishment of a tribal “emirate” in Hebron, separate from the Palestinian Authority, which first surfaced in the pages of the Wall Street Journal last July.
Local Palestinian media speculated as to whether Abu Sneineh’s arrest was possibly a prelude to removing potential sources of local opposition to annexation, especially given Abu Sneineh’s background and his status as a consequential local nationalist figure in Hebron.
These events, in addition to a number of other developments in the lead-up to the Smotrich proposal, have catapulted the issue of Israel’s potential annexation of the West Bank to the top of the Israeli government’s agenda, and have left millions of Palestinians in the West Bank unsure of their future.
The background
The Israeli cabinet met last Sunday for the second time in two weeks to discuss options for the annexation of parts of the West Bank. It was followed by a meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week, in which Saar informed Rubio of Israel’s intention to “impose Israeli sovereignty” on the Palestinian territory, according to the Israeli news site, Walla.
Meanwhile, Israel has been engaging in a show of force against the PA by launching several raids on major West Bank cities that make up Area A under the Oslo Accords, which comprise about 18% of the West Bank and are supposed to be under PA jurisdiction. The Israeli army launched the largest military raid in years on Ramallah last week, occupying the city center of the PA’s de facto capital with hundreds of troops accompanied by Israeli media crews for over three hours. The very next day, the Israeli army launched a similar raid in Nablus, the second most important PA center of power.
Although Israel claims that its latest moves to annex the West Bank are a response to the announcement by several European states that they intend to recognize Palestine as a state, Israel’s annexation of the West Bank has been years in the making.
In 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged during his election campaign to annex the Jordan Valley. The first Trump administration allegedly stopped Israel twice, in January and June of 2020, from formally announcing annexation.
However, the same Trump administration announced its “Deal of the Century” plan in 2020, which included the annexation of most of the West Bank, including all of the Jordan Valley. Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over illegal settlements in the West Bank, the occupied Syrian Golan heights, and over all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Palestinians overwhelmingly rejected it.
Israel’s current plan of annexation is based on Smotrich’s 2015 “decisive plan,” which aims to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and expel Palestinians through encouraging so-called “voluntary migration.” Smotrich also said that Palestinians in the West Bank would either submit to Israeli sovreignty, leave the country, or “be dealt with” by Israeli forces. After October 7, Smotrich said that the annexation of the West Bank should be Israel’s response to the Hamas attack. He later said that Israel’s expulsion of half of Gaza’s population would “set a precedent” to do the same in the West Bank.
Attacking the PA
Over the past two years, Smotrich has been leading a campaign of financial strangulation against the PA, pirating Palestinian customs money that Israel collects on the PA’s behalf as per the Oslo Accords. Smotrich has also periodically threatened to ban Israeli banks from dealing with Palestinian banks, and in the meantime has compelled Israeli banks to limit the amount of cash that Palestinian banks can transfer to Israeli banks.
Both of the above measured have forced the PA into an ongoing financial crisis, unable to pay public functionaries, medics, teachers, and security staff their full monthly salaries for months on end. And if Smotrich goes through with actually banning all financial dealings between Israeli and Palestinian banks, it would spell total financial collapse in the West Bank, threatening the PA’s very existence.
Weakening the PA to this level is meant to obviate its need for Palestinians and to pave the way for annexation. And Smotrich is just the face of this recent push to isolate and besiege the PA — he is one of many Israeli ministers key to the continuity of Netanyahu’s government, including Itamar Ben-Gvir, Amichai Elyahu, and Orit Strock, all of whom represent the religious right and control the majority in the Israeli Knesset.
The Knesset has also been laying the legal grounds for the West Bank’s annexation for years. In 2018, the Knesset passed the Israeli Nation State Law, which states that the only right to self-determination between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean sea belongs to the Jewish people. In July of last year, the Knesset passed a bill rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state anywhere between the river and the sea, and a year later — last July — the Knesset passed a bill enabling the annexation of the West Bank.
The U.S. role
The prelude to the official annexation of the Palestinian territory isn’t limited to Israeli measures, but also includes what are so far symbolic U.S. moves underwriting Israel’s intentions. As European states, including France, the UK, and Belgium, announce plans to recognize a Palestinian state during the UN General Assembly later this month, the U.S., for its part, revoked visas for Palestinian officials, including the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, set to attend the General Assembly. The move was followed by Washington’s decision to stop issuing visas to any Palestinian passport holders.
In essence, this means that the U.S. is implicitly supporting Israel’s plans to erase the possibility of a Palestinian state and extending Israel’s control over all Palestinian territories.
Although Smotrich’s most recent plan has been described as “maximalist,” the general orientation of Israeli lawmakers, even the “pragmatic” opposition represented by Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, does not oppose annexation in any meaningful sense. The main differences that do exist between Israelis is not over annexation per se, but over its extent.
The less “maximalist” Israeli lawmakers either call for the annexation of all Israeli settlements, the annexation of Area C (which makes up over 60% of the West Bank), or the annexation of the Jordan Valley. But all those versions would deprive Palestinians of any meaningful geographic continuity, control over natural resources and borders, or prospects for future population growth. In essence, the entire Israeli political class is deadset on making a Palestinian state an impossibility. This is the range of political currents the U.S. is picking between to support.
Ultimately, the U.S. will be the one to decide whether official annexation as a whole will move forward. Axios quoted two unnamed U.S. officials that it was “unlikely” Trump would support such a move. But even if Washington halts the de jure annexation of the West Bank, it will most likely offer an “alternative” that would solidify de facto annexation.
