The White House reaffirmed on Monday US President Donald Trump’s long-standing opposition to Israeli annexation of the West Bank. It is Palestinian territory, both historically and as recognised by the UN, and foundational to any future Palestinian state. It appears the message has been entirely lost on Israel, whose security cabinet a day earlier scrapped decades-old regulations restricting Israelis from purchasing land there. The move comes mere days ahead of a meeting between Mr Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state,” said Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, as the new measures were announced.
Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank may, indeed, be in its death throes. Since the early 1990s, the Palestinian Authority controls a mere 40 per cent of the territory’s land – portions known as Area A, where it controls administration and security, and Area B, where administration is Palestinian but security is handled by Israel.
Area C, the remaining 60 per cent, has become Israeli in all but name. Together with East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in 1967, it is home to more than 700,000 Jewish Israelis, the vast majority of whom live in settlements considered illegal under international law. The settler population has exploded in recent years, and in Area C and East Jerusalem it is now thought to outnumber Palestinian residents.
The Israeli decision on Sunday repeals Law No 40, passed in 1953 when Jordan controlled the West Bank, which restricted land sales in the territory to Arab buyers. The intent was to prevent Israeli settlement that could undermine a future Palestinian state, and the law continued to be applied by the Palestinian Authority when it assumed control over Areas A and B, and at least notionally applied by Israel in its military occupation of Area C.
But the law has been circumvented in various ways to allow settlements to expand rapidly in recent years – either through settlers stealing or illegally purchasing land, or the Israeli military ignoring settlement construction in areas it has declared to be military zones.
Nonetheless, Law No 40 was seen as one of the last guardrails against Jewish-Israeli expansionism. Israel's latest measures have other, deeply problematic aspects, including extending Israeli authority over certain Palestinian religious and archaeological sites, and publishing information on who owns land in the West Bank. The latter move, billed by Israel’s government as an act of transparency, is likely to expose Palestinian owners of coveted lands to harassment campaigns by Israeli settler groups.
The Israeli foreign ministry, meanwhile, has said the new measures correct “a racist distortion” that “discriminated against Jews, Americans, Europeans and anyone who is not Arab regarding real estate purchases in [the West Bank]”. The statement ought to raise eyebrows among more principled Israelis, considering a series of other laws render around 80 per cent of land in Israel proper off-limits to Arab buyers, including those with Israeli citizenship.
Critics, including major Muslim-majority countries like the UAE, have argued that Law No 40’s repeal is Israel’s latest effort at “accelerating attempts at its illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people”. They are right. Palestinians have resisted Israeli designs on the West Bank for decades, and although they have proved outmatched by the military occupation, until now they could at least in theory appeal to the rule of law to contest settlement expansion. Now even the law is unambiguously against them, and Israel’s far right have one fewer constraint in their mission to kill Palestinian statehood.
