Israeli Plan to Change West Bank Civil Administration: Details and Goals

In the meantime, along the Israeli humiliating failure to realize their war goals, tightening the security measures by the Israeli hardline cabinet led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have gone nowhere, and the members of resistance groups along with voluntary forces in various regions including Al-Khalil, Qalqiya, Tobas, Ramallah, and Jerico have put the enemy in a tight spot. 

According to reports published by Palestinian Health Ministry, the number of people killed by the Israeli forces in the West Bank has reached 553, 133 of whom are children. About 5,300 others were injured, the ministry reported. Every day, Israel soldiers attack different parts of the West Bank, and at the same time, the Israeli settlers have expanded their encroachment on the West Bank and are massively destroying Palestinian homes. 

These actions indicate that the situation is spiralling out of control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli army in the West Bank amid escalating clashes between the Palestinians and Israeli settlers and the expansion and solidification of the social base of the resistance in the West Bank.

In such conditions, the crisis-stricken cabinet of Netanyahu, whose Rafah invasion campaign failed, is seeking to take revenge on the West Bank people for its losses through announcing new occupational plans in this Palestinian region. 

According to the Yedioth Ahronoth, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is among the most radical cabinet members, in a conference last week in one of the West Bank cities talk about implementing a plan to change the way the West Bank is administered. He added that this region will go under the control of the government rather than the army. 

At a meeting with settlers on June 9, Smotrich in a taped address said that "Benjamin Netanyahu's government is engaged in a secret plan to change the way it governs the West Bank to irreversibly strengthen Israeli control over the region, without being accused of officially annexing it. 

What will happen following new changes? 

According to the tape, Smotrich plans to take over the leverage of the army in the West Bank and transfer it to the civil institutions under his authority.

This plan is being implemented after a long struggle between Smotrich and Defense Minister Yoav over the force qualified to run the West Bank. Finally, the pressures of Smotrich and other cabinet hardliners on Netanyahu bore fruits and the finance minister, who is a settler, managed to appoint his legal advisor as the head of the West Bank's civil administration in the defense ministry, practically transferring all of the legal powers of the defense ministry in this region to himself. 

The formation of a civil administration for the West Bank (and the Gaza Strip until 2005) was included in the Camp David Agreements between Egypt and Israel in 1978. The civil administration was actually the Israeli institution ruling the West Bank, which was responsible for security and executive affairs in the occupied territories of 1967, and was practically the equivalent of the Israeli ministry of interior. 

Despite the Israeli promises, with the formation of a civil administration, administration of the West Bank affairs was not taken off the hands of the army, and though they were ostensibly separate, the administration remained a subset of the army and internal intelligence service Shin Bet. Actually, the civil administration was part of a larger body that acts as the coordinator of the government activities in this region and is in fact a unit in the army. 

According to the Oslo Accords, the civil administration was responsible for all administrative aspects of the local population in Area C of the West Bank and was responsible for coordination with the Palestinian Authority in Area A and limited authority in Area B in accordance with the terms of the agreement. But after 2002, the prohibitions which banned Israeli military operations in Area A were effectively lifted by the Israelis. 

Given this, the new decision to modefiy the civil administration status, which is announced by a hardline politician, is actually part of the bill of the ministers approved in February 2023 that says some of the settlements are defined as "treatment settlements." 

Under this definition, the government is allowed to invest, construct infrastructures, and prevent destruction of illegal constructions in these settlements even without completing legal procedures and obtaining state licenses. 

According to the newspaper, settlement officials and Minister of National Missions, Orit Struck, were present at Smotrich's conference.

Reports suggest that offices of Smotrich and Struck are financing about 63 unapproved settlements in the hope of later getting licenses for their construction. 

The finance ministry has already allocated 85 million shekels ($22.8 million) to improve security and another 7 billion shekels ($1.9 billion) to improve and build roads in the West Bank to support the growth of the settler population in the region.

According to Israeli estimates, more than 720,000 settlers are currently living in settlements in the West Bank, including in the Eastern Al-Quds (Jerusalem).

Goals of plan 

According to the experts, in the first place, these changes are part of Smotrich's plans to prevent formation of an independent Palestinian state and to practically annex all the illegal settlements in the West Bank to other occupied territories, and also to complete new settlements, and finally to annex all the West Bank to the Israeli regime. 

Since the beginning of the Gaza war and the big crimes that the Israeli army has committed against civilians in this small besieged strip, the international support for the formation of an independent Palestinian state has met a stunning jump, with so far 148 countries, including several new European countries Like Norway, Ireland, and Spain, having recognized the state of Palestine. Continuation of this situation in important international institutions such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice has made the Israelis terrified about the long-feared nightmare of an independent Palestinian state.

Smotrich told the New York Times about the new government plan that a "majority of the people [of Israel] know well that formation of a Palestinian country in the West Bank endangers the very existence of Israel and they do not oppose what I'm doing... I will continue settlements in the heart of Israel." 

Actually, escaping forward in the confrontation of the growing global pressures, the Israelis hope and believe that these settlements will challenge formation of a Palestinian state and with gradual annexation of the West Bank, Tel Aviv will kill the Palestinian dream for an independent state. 

But according to the New York Times, the changes Smotrich is planning actually run counter to the Israeli position in the West Bank due to the security consequences and will impact its security. Any change to the civil administration for construction of new settlements, according to the newspaper, can inflame the conflict. 

As this American paper predicted, in the first reaction, Hamas in a statement called on the Palestinians of the West Bank to "continue their uprising against the Zionist occupation, army, and the settlers and activate all the available instruments of resistance until failure of these plans." 

The resistance group said that the West Bank annexation plans "confirm the fascist tendencies of this government" and emphasized on unity of Palestine behind the resistance option to counter the Israeli actions.

The Hamas statement added:"The international community, which is monitoring these aggressions and criminal plans against our people and land, must act immediately and put pressure on the extremist Zionist government to stop it." 

But another goal the Israeli minister is seeking behind this plan to cover up the internal crises the cabinet is grappling with, in a way that through a Netanyahu deal with the hardliners that will see the latter accepting the war end in return for settlement expansion projects, the cabinet will be saved from a definite collapse. 

From months ago, the hardliners of the cabinet had warned that if Netanyahu ends the war under home and foreign pressures, they will topple the government with withdrawal from the coalition. Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir's demands at the end of the road forced the PM to shrug off Benny Gantz's ultimatum on a clear war strategy. However, Netanyahu is still under pressure at home and abroad to stop the genocidal war on Gaza. 

So, it seems that with the disappointing results the Israeli army made after Rafah invasion as the last play card, Netanyahu by giving a leeway to the radicals of his cabinet in the West Bank seeks to save what remains of the cabinet after end of the Gaza war.

As a confirmation to this, Smotrich noted on the tape that the PM is aware of the details of the plan, which is part of the coalition agreement allowing Netanyahu to remain in power. Smotrich boasted in his remarks that the PM fully supports the plan.