With Gaza in limbo, Israel asserts ownership rights in West Bank

JERUSALEM – With Gaza stuck in post-war limbo, Israel is pursuing West Bank administrative measures meant to

assert ownership over land

and further sideline Palestinian authorities.

The Israeli edicts are cast by their far-right sponsors in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government as the most sweeping since the West Bank was captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. 

For now, Israel is stopping short of a formal annexation that would alienate Arab partners and jumble US President Donald Trump’s regional plans.

The Palestinians see little distinction, however. 

On territory where they want statehood, Israeli settlements have expanded steadily while the world focuses on the Gaza crisis and Mr Trump’s face-off with Iran.

The measures announced in February create, for many Palestinians, a rampart of red tape that could be impossible to negotiate or contest.

Mr Netanyahu’s Cabinet on Feb 8 approved the institution of a West Bank land registry, saying that it would prevent anyone building on plots that are not theirs.

Palestinians suspect an effort to designate unclaimed land as the property of Israel and then settle it.

That followed a decision last week by Israel to publish ownership records for the West Bank, and to steamline procedures for Israelis to buy realty from Palestinians or to develop a shrine in the flashpoint city of Hebron that’s holy to Jews and Muslims. 

Israel’s moves “are designed to predetermine the fate of Palestinian territory and undermine any future possibility of reclaiming land or renegotiating its status,” said Mr Amir Daoud, chief settlement monitor for the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank. 

Ms Hagit Ofran, an activist with the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, described the registry as a holdover from the pre-1967 Jordanian and British administrators of the West Bank who, she said, managed to log only about one-third of the private land-owners.

“It’s extremely demanding in terms of the information required and the costs involved in providing it,” she said. “The default position will be that these are state lands unless proven otherwise, and proving otherwise will be very, very difficult.” 

Israel deems the West Bank, also known by the biblical names Judea and Samaria, as its birthright and a security buffer.

US-brokered Palestinian statehood talks stalled in 2014 and, since the Gaza war, are considered anathema by most Israelis. 

Yet world powers still back the PA as a precursor to a Palestinian state, the aspirational end-point of Mr Trump’s Gaza peace plan.

The settlements, meanwhile, are widely condemned as a breach of international law on occupied land.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right author of the new measures, said in a statement that they “fundamentally change the legal and civic reality in Judea and Samaria and bury the idea of a Palestinian state.” 

In a radio interview, Mr Orit Strock, a minister in Mr Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, described Palestinian property law as excluding Jews, and said among reasons the West Bank registry was being “resurrected” was “to procure land for the state of Israel.”

Mr Smotrich has urged that the PA be dismantled, which is a step too far for Mr Netanyahu.

But the premier has permitted his finance minister to withhold tax revenues collected on behalf of the PA in order to signal displeasure with funds it pays out to the families of Palestinians killed during or imprisoned for attacks against Israelis. 

With the money accounting for about 70 per cent of Palestinian public income and US$4.4 billion (S$5.56 billion) of it now frozen by Israel, the PA warns dissolution could be imminent. 

“What we are experiencing is not a passing crisis, but an existential threat to public finances, the economy, and the entire Palestinian national project driven by an Israeli government that has decided to destroy the Palestinian Authority,” Palestinian Finance Minister Estephan Salameh told reporters last week. 

That’s spelled hardship for Palestinian civil servants, many of whom have been receiving only partial salaries.

Mr Mohammad, a 35‑year‑old father of three who declined to give his surname, said a more than 40 per cent cut to his government wages had forced him to work part-time as a taxi driver. 

“How am I supposed to cover the expenses of a home and children?” he said, describing a life in which basic necessities are increasingly out of reach.

“We work only so we can eat and drink is this a life? They want to do anything just to make us leave this place, but I’m not going anywhere.” BLOOMBERG