Israeli minister now governs West Bank

WEST BANK, Sept 14 (AP): With attention focused on its contentious judicial overhaul, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has quietly taken unprecedented steps toward cementing Israel's control over the occupied West Bank - perhaps permanently.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a leader of the settlement movement, assumed new powers over the occupied territory in his coalition agreement with Netanyahu. Smotrich moved swiftly to approve thousands of new settlement homes, legalize previously unauthorized wildcat outposts and make it more difficult for Palestinians to build homes and move about.
As the first government minister to oversee civilian life in the West Bank, his role amounts to a recognition that Israel's 56-year military occupation is not temporary but permanent, observers say.
"If Smotrich keeps this position for four years we will be at a point of no return," said Ilan Paz, former head of Israel's Civil Administration, a military body overseeing civilian affairs in the West Bank.
Hoping to return to power while facing a corruption trial, Netanyahu offered sweeping concessions to pro-settler lawmakers like Smotrich to form his governing coalition last year. The coalition agreement created a new Israeli settler agency, led by Smotrich, within the Defense Ministry to manage Jewish and Palestinian construction in the 60% of the West Bank over which Israel has control.
"It's a sort of revolution, transferring powers from the military, with its legal obligation to consider the well-being of occupied people, to those only committed to Israeli interests," said human rights lawyer Michael Sfard.
Smotrich has said he seeks to double the settler population, build up roads and neighborhoods and erase any remaining differences between life for Israelis in the West Bank and within Israel proper. Along the way, he hopes to destroy any Palestinian hopes of independence.
As finance minister, Smotrich can funnel taxpayer funds to West Bank infrastructure projects. Israel's 2024 budget earmarks an all-time high of $960 million - a quarter of all Transportation Ministry funds - for a highway network better connecting Israel to the West Bank. The settlers are just over 5% of Israel's population.
Israel considers the West Bank the biblical heartland of the Jewish people. Smotrich and his supporters envision a single state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea in which Palestinians can live quietly with second-class status or leave.
"We felt like the state never prioritized us because of where we lived. Smotrich is changing that," said Smotrich's spokesperson Eitan Fuld.
While Smotrich's new settler agency now handles the territory's land-use issues, COGAT, the military body that oversees the Civil Administration, retains specific responsibilities over more than 2 million Palestinians. Rights groups and others have compared the division along ethnic lines to " apartheid."
Some half-million settlers live in the West Bank, which Israel captured along with east Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war. The international community overwhelmingly considers the settlements illegal.