During the war in Gaza, Israeli colonization of the West Bank must continue unabated. This is the message from Betzalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance and leader of a far-right party. As head of the Israeli Settlement Authority, he initiated a plan to legalize 68 “wildcat” settlements. These settlements populated by ultranationalist activists, who thus want to present the authorities with a fait accompli, are nevertheless illegal in the eyes of Israeli law.
To prove the seriousness of his intentions, Betzalel Smotrich gave instructions to various ministries to accelerate preparations so that these future colonies, once they become “legal”, have all public services for Health, Education and Transport. In February 2023, the Minister of Finance had already obtained the legalization of ten of these illegal settlements, installed in the middle of the West Bank.
Break up the West Bank
Their objective is clear: to divide this region and make the creation of a viable Palestinian state with geographical continuity almost impossible.
But the Minister of Finance, whose support is vital for the majority of 64 votes out of 120 in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Parliament, wants to go further. He plans to declare 2,000 hectares as state land in the Jordan Valley, which would allow settlements to be built there.
He also wants to seize homes in Hebron in the southern West Bank that belonged to Jews before they were killed or fled following Arab pogroms in 1929. Yoav Gallant, the minister of Defense has for the moment vetoed these two projects in order to avoid a conflagration.
Iron Fist Politics
The West Bank, which is already under great tension, has remained under the control of the Israeli army, despite calls for riots and attacks launched by Hamas as a sign of solidarity with the Gaza Strip. This very relative calm was imposed by an iron fist policy applied by the IDF, which resulted in the death of 480 Palestinians and several thousand arrests.
Abroad, this acceleration of colonization is going very badly. For international law, all settlements erected in the West Bank, a region conquered and occupied since the June 1967 war by the Jewish state, where half a million Israelis live, are illegal. Betzalel Smotrich’s initiatives only intensify this hostility.
Irresponsible projects
The US State Department described the minister’s plans as “dangerous and irresponsible”. Emmanuel Macron, during a telephone interview with Abdullah II, the King of Jordan, “strongly condemned Israeli announcements on colonization”.
These criticisms hardly impressed Betzalel Smotrich. In a letter to Benjamin Netanyahu, he threatened to freeze transfers of customs duties and VAT that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas, which controls part of the West Bank, in case the States- United and Europeans would recognize a Palestinian state. He also called for the annexation of “Judea and Samaria”, the biblical name for the West Bank, if the Palestinian Authority manages to convince the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants against Israeli political leaders for crimes of war.
To complete the picture, the United States has extended the list of settlers accused of violence against Palestinians. For the first time, an Israeli army unit, made up mainly of settlers and far-right activists, has been sanctioned and will no longer be able to receive American weapons, for example.