In the West Bank, new Israeli regulations stoke Palestinian fears of annexation

While previous U.S. administrations have condemned Israeli expansion in the West Bank, neither the White House nor the State Department have issued statements on the new measures, and it is unclear whether the issue was raised when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump last week in Washington, their seventh meeting in the past year.

In an interview with Axios last week, Trump said he opposed annexation, although he did not directly address the new rules. “We have enough to think about now,” he said. “We don’t need to deal with the West Bank.”

Netanyahu, who faces elections later this year, views Palestinian statehood as a security threat and his ruling coalition, which has a large voter base in the settlements, includes many members who want Israel to annex the West Bank.

Far-right politicians like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich “certainly want to use this in Israeli domestic politics with their base,” said Michael Koplow, political director of the Israel Policy Forum, a U.S. organization that works toward a two-state solution, or the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel.

Smotrich is a member of the settler community that has long claimed the West Bank on behalf of Israel. His Religious Zionism Party holds seven seats in the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, and he is “trying to do everything he can while he is still able to do it,” Koplow said. A poll released Wednesday by Maagar Mohot and Stat-Net predicted that the party would not win any seats if elections were held today.

Smotrich has pledged to double the settler population in the West Bank, and in December he was part of the cabinet that approved a proposal for 19 new settlements in the territory. Israel is also preparing to build a controversial settlement project near Jerusalem, known as E1, which would effectively divide the north and south of the West Bank.

Along with settlement expansion, the United Nations recorded more than 1,800 attacks by Jewish settlers that caused casualties or property damage in 2025, the highest daily average since it began recording settler attacks in 2006.

This is one reason why news of the new Cabinet decisions appears to have gone largely unnoticed by the few people who strolled last week in Hebron’s Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site and bordering the Al Ibrahimi Mosque, known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs.

That could change, as under newly approved powers, Israel said it would assume planning authority for the site and other areas of archaeological interest.

“Everyone heard about the new law, but in reality people were already experiencing it because it was already in effect,” Dudin said. “Apartheid now exists in every sense of the word. »

Neighboring buildings occupied by Jewish settlers dominated several streets in the Old City, covered with nets intended to catch stones and debris that settlers threw at Palestinian pedestrians below.

But Shawamla, the baker, said he was determined to continue the activity started by his father, helped by the flour and semolina that the governorate of Dudin gives to the shops in the old city to keep them afloat.

“If the institutions continue to support us, we will continue to work until our last breath,” he said. “We will continue, even with our last strength, to preserve our birthplace, our shops. We live here. We were born in the old town.”