The main takeaway from a very confusing, legalese statement issued by Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz on Sunday is that the West Bank may be slowly transforming into Judea and Samaria.
There was no big annexation announcement, and one will probably not come anytime soon.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not even say a word.
Only technical experts who have been following the Byzantine processes in which Israelis and Palestinians compete for disputed land in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria, will fully comprehend the multiple complex moves that the government is making.
The process of gradual annexation has been taking place in smaller or medium ways since the current government took power in 2023, and its pace has increased since Netanyahu fired defense minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024.
Obstacles to annexation
The world has protested somewhat – and both the Biden and Trump administrations have been restrained to a degree – but less than in prior years, given the Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria distractions.
A series of rules used to be in place, requiring additional approvals from the IDF legal division, the Civil Administration, the Palestinian Authority, and others for the West Bank.
One of those rules was that Israelis could generally not purchase land in Area A of the West Bank, which is administered by the PA, as set down by the mid-1990s Oslo Accords.
There were also certain limits regarding Area B (under primary PA control but smaller than Area A) and Area C (under Israeli control but still disputed and mostly unsettled by both sides).
In a way, there was a Judea and Samaria of 500,000 to 700,000 Jews (depending on which areas you count), living mixed in with about three million Palestinians in the West Bank.
Another rule was that Israel carried out very little expansion in the Hebron area, a relic of the Wye River Memorandum that Netanyahu agreed to in the late 1990s.
This latest announcement means repealing or streamlining many of those rules to make it easier for Jewish Israelis to acquire land in areas where it was much harder to do so until now.
It is no coincidence that this is happening now.
Influential and outgoing Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories commander Maj.-Gen. Rasan Elian, who held the post since 2021, was replaced a few days ago by Maj.-Gen. Yoram Halevi, who either lacks the same influence as a new general coming in from the police, or whose politics dovetail much more with the government’s latest moves.
OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth has bulldozed illegal Jewish outposts when required by law, but his heart has also always been in line with trying to find legal ways to expand Jewish settlement in this disputed zone.
Additionally, the US government is distracted by the Iran crisis, trying to manage the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire plans and various other crises that have nothing to do with Israel.
If Netanyahu tried to annex all of the West Bank in one fell swoop, the Trump administration would probably block him.
But if other elements of his government are playing around a little here and there with inane West Bank legal constructs and bureaucracy, there will likely be much less pushback as Netanyahu makes his way to Washington on Wednesday.
Israeli elections are also in the air, and Netanyahu and Smotrich likely will both try to present these changes as major achievements for domestic consumption among their constituents.
The upshot is not that “the West Bank” of the Palestinians will be gone. It is likely that the Palestinian portions and disputed portions of that area will shrink, and faster, in the coming period in favor of the growing Judea and Samaria areas run by Jewish Israelis.