Smotrich Completed Israel’s Annexation of the West Bank
A few days ago, the constitutional revolution ended, but no, not in Israel. Few people know this, but the Ben-Gvir-Smotrich-Netanyahu government conspired to carry out two coups d’état, one in Israel and the other in the West Bank.
The first aims to eliminate the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary and to create a dictatorship in Israel; the second aims to annex the West Bank and perpetuate Jewish supremacy there as a guiding principle. To prevent the first, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets. But no one did the same to prevent the second – for what is wrong with Jewish supremacy continuing?
The regime’s revolution in the West Bank is being carried out in accordance with the commitments that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made to religious Zionist leader Bezalel Smotrich as part of the coalition agreement. This essentially involves the transfer of all governing powers in the West Bank, except those directly related to security, from the army to an apparatus headed by Smotrich himself.
In late May, it happened. Quietly, without ceremony or announcement to the press, Yehuda Fuchs, the head of the army’s Central Command (and the commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank), signed an order creating a new position in the army’s civil administration, that of “deputy chief of civil affairs,” and the head of the civil administration signed a document delegating authority to the holder of the new position.
But the “deputy” is actually a civilian appointed by Smotrich and is not a deputy in any way because he is not subordinate to the head of the civil administration. He does not need any approval for his actions, is not required to consult or report to him. He is subordinate only to Smotrich.
The order and the letter of delegation of powers transferred most – in fact almost all – of the powers held by the head of the civil administration to the new deputy. Land use planning, planning and construction, combating unauthorized construction, supervision and management of local authorities, professional licenses, trade and economy, management of nature reserves and archaeological sites.
Smotrich performed an administrative enema (excuse the image) on the head of the Civil Administration, stripping him of all his powers, and transferring them to Smotrich himself via the deputy he himself appointed.
If we describe it figuratively: Since the signing of the order, an officer has been walking around the division headquarters in Beit El boasting the title of “head of the civil administration,” but given the changes, he is effectively unemployed and can devote his time to organizing cultural and recreational activities for his subordinates. Someone should tell him that he may be a “leader,” but that this leader has no body.
However, the transfer of authority from an officer subordinate to the IDF commander in the West Bank to a civilian subordinate to the outpost that Smotrich established within the Defense Ministry has a significance that goes far beyond issues such as schedules and shifts. It is a radical change in the governmental apparatus of the occupied territory, from a military administration, subject to international law requiring it to care for the occupied population, to a territory directly managed by civil administration officials and elected Israeli officials, whose loyalty and duty are by definition owed to Israeli citizens in general, and to Israeli citizens living in the occupied territory in particular. To understand the magnitude of this change, one must realize what international law was trying to achieve when it determined that the occupied territories should be managed by a military government.
International law defines a state of occupation as a temporary management of territory by the occupier and categorically prohibits its unilateral annexation. This is not just another prohibition, but a key principle intended to consolidate the principle that excludes the use of force in international relations, except in cases of self-defense. If it is clear that sovereignty cannot be acquired by force, there will be fewer reasons to engage in a war of aggression. In other words, this principle of prohibiting the unilateral annexation of an occupied territory is at the heart of the rules-based international order established after World War II, which is based on the desire to eradicate wars. The purpose of determining that an occupied territory will be managed by a temporary military administration, and not directly by the occupying government, was to create a buffer between the citizens of the occupying country, who are its sovereigns, and the ruling apparatus in the occupied territory.
This order is based on the idea that the military is less attached to political considerations, while the ministries of an elected government are by definition attached to pursuing them. The transfer of administrative powers to the officials of the occupation government and its elected representatives creates direct power of the citizens of the occupier over the occupied territory, thus extending the sovereignty of the occupier to the occupied territory. In other words: annexation. This is what Smotrich succeeded in doing. He completely removed the army (including the military legal council) from the decision-making process regarding anything that is not directly related to security in the West Bank, effectively imposing Israeli sovereignty over the region.
This will have disastrous consequences for Palestinian rights. The few restrictions that the army has, in one way or another, imposed on the dispossession and violation of Palestinian rights will now be removed. The members of the NGO Regavim, the Kohelet Forum and the Honenu organization, whom Smotrich has appointed to all the important positions in the new civil administration in the West Bank, mainly as legal advisers, will remove the remaining restrictions. They will pounce on the proverbial (Palestinian) poor man’s sheep, slaughter it, tear out the meat and suck out the marrow. This is already happening. New settlements will be built, new neighborhoods will be built at a pace we have not yet seen, vast tracts of land will be given to violent Israelis to set up farms, Palestinian structures built without permits will be demolished at a furious pace, while illegal settler construction will be legalized. Fearless and shameless apartheid. Apartheid as a blueprint.
The great shame is that no one stood up to oppose it, neither in Israel nor in the world at large. The same world that imposed heavy sanctions on Russia when it criminally annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and then the territories it had conquered after invading Ukraine, remained silent and did not utter a single sound when it came to Israel. Indeed, the world uses a different criterion when it comes to Israel. But contrary to the chatter of Israeli public diplomacy, this is positive discrimination, which exempts Israel from the law. The only thing the criminal annexationists must say to themselves today is: why did we wait 57 years? It is that simple.
Michael Sfard
The author, a human rights lawyer, appealed this week on behalf of Yesh Din and ACRI to the defense minister and the commander of the Israeli Defense Forces in the West Bank, demanding the revocation of the order mentioned in this article.
Haaretz
Translation: AFPS
