Israeli security cabinet approves rules to increase control over West Bank | News

The Palestinian presidency calls the decision a ‘dangerous’ Israeli ‘attempt to legalize settlement expansion’.

Israel’s security cabinet has approved new rules aimed at strengthening Israeli control over the occupied West Bank, according to local media reports, drawing condemnation from Palestinian authorities.

The Palestinian presidency, in a statement on Sunday, called the decision “dangerous” and an “open Israeli attempt to legalize settlement expansion” and land confiscation. President Mahmoud Abbas’s office called on the United States and the United Nations Security Council to intervene immediately.

Reacting to the Israeli move, the Palestinian group Hamas called on people in the West Bank to “intensify the confrontation with the occupation and its settlers”.

Meanwhile, Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also condemned the decision, which it said was “aimed at imposing illegal Israeli sovereignty” and entrenching settlements.

The rules will make it easier for Israeli settlers to buy land in the occupied West Bank and give Israeli officials stronger powers to enforce laws on Palestinians in the area, Israeli media reported.

The West Bank is among the areas that Palestinians seek for a future independent state, along with Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem. Much of the West Bank is under direct Israeli military control, with extremely limited Palestinian self-rule in some areas, governed by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA).

According to the Israeli news outlets Ynet and Haaretz, the new steps include ending rules that prevented Jewish individuals from buying land in the occupied West Bank.

The measures also include allowing Israeli authorities to take charge of managing some religious sites and increasing Israeli supervision and enforcement in areas run by the PA, according to the media reports.

Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Birzeit in the occupied West Bank, said the Israeli measures are “the most dangerous and serious push towards annexation and the most critical decision since Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967”.

“It allows individual Israeli settlers to own land in areas that have historically been under Palestinian control, according to the signed agreement,” Ibrahim said.

“There’s nothing that prevents settlers from owning land and coming to the city centre of Ramallah and building houses,” Ibrahim said, adding that owning land or building houses by settlers is illegal under the signed agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and international laws that prohibit an occupying power from moving its citizens to occupied territory.

Ibrahim said Palestinians are allowed to build houses only in Areas A and B, where they have been able to own land and build and expand. “There are a lot of restrictions on Palestinians owning land or building houses. Every time they build in Area C, Israel demolishes them,” she said. Area C in particular has a lot of settler presence.

The office of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a statement, “We will continue to bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

“We are anchoring settlement as an inseparable part of Israel’s government policy,” said Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz.

Palestinian Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh said the reports about expected Israeli steps to increase annexation and create new facts on the ground in the occupied West Bank are a total violation of all signed and binding agreements, a serious escalation, and a violation of international law, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

He emphasised that these unilateral measures aim to eliminate any political prospects, obliterate the two-state solution, and drag the entire region into further tension and instability.

The Al Jazeera correspondent said Israeli authorities can now demolish houses in Areas A and B, which have historically been under Palestinian control.

“This decision puts the entire occupied West Bank in limbo and further consolidates Israel’s occupation and control of land. In the words of many Israeli leaders, it buries the dream of an independent Palestinian state,” she said.

The reports come three days before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC.