Israel moves closer to West Bank annexation

A new set of measures approved by Israel’s security cabinet consolidating control over the occupied West Bank are being openly celebrated as a step toward annexation. Energy Minister Eli Cohen said the move would establish “de facto sovereignty” and “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, said the move would make it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians off their land and to “continue to bury the idea of a Palestinian state.”

Adoption of the measures has drawn international condemnation. Already this year, almost 700 Palestinians in different parts of the West Bank have been forced off their lands by attacks from Israeli settlers. Israeli authorities have also been issuing demolition orders and evicting people from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem. (The New Humanitarian)