How does settlement policy turn occupation into permanent control?

In 2017, Bezalel Smotrich published a plan to extend Israeli sovereignty and settle the West Bank deeply enough to show that a Palestinian state would not emerge.^[1] In May 2024, military orders handed most of the powers over the West Bank’s civilian administration to a new civilian deputy reporting to civilian officials in the Defence Ministry, where Smotrich served as an additional minister. The UN Secretary-General’s report records that the change was made as agreed in Israel’s coalition agreements and between the Defence Minister and Smotrich.^[2]

The orders redistributed administrative powers rather than formally declaring sovereignty. The authority that allocates land changed hands. That is how occupation can become permanent control without a single announcement: through land designations, planning rules, infrastructure and governing power that together decide whose presence is supported and whose development is restricted. Smotrich’s plan establishes his stated objective, not proof that each later decision implements it. Its relevance is that the responsibilities later placed under his authority concern the same land, planning and settlement processes. This article separates what has been decided, what has been built and what is projected.

Temporary by agreement

Occupation does not confer sovereignty. In its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice concluded that Israeli settlements and their associated regime violated international law, and that Israel’s policies and practices amounted to annexation of large parts of the occupied Palestinian territory. An advisory opinion is not a judgment in a case between states, but its findings address the legality of existing conduct rather than a preference about future negotiations.^[3]

This article concerns the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Israel applied its domestic law to East Jerusalem; much of the rest has been governed through military orders and the interim division of authority agreed with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The ICJ rejected Israel’s claim of sovereignty over occupied territory.^[3] Gaza’s settlement history differs: Israel evacuated its settlements there in 2005.^[4]

The 1995 Interim Agreement reserved settlements, borders and Jerusalem for permanent-status negotiations. It committed both parties to preserving the integrity of the West Bank and Gaza as a single territorial unit, and prohibited steps that changed their status before those negotiations ended. It defined Area C, the part of the West Bank outside Palestinian jurisdiction where the settlements lie, as territory that, apart from the issues reserved for permanent-status talks, would be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction.^[5] Israel argues that these agreements leave settlements to direct negotiation.^[6] Read that way, an interim arrangement becomes permission to restructure the territory indefinitely in favour of one population. The better test is whether each measure preserves the possibility of a negotiated outcome or narrows it.

Land made available by definition

The first step is designating land as public property. Peace Now, an Israeli settlement-monitoring organisation, explains how Israeli authorities have applied their interpretation of Ottoman land rules, including cultivation requirements, to declare unregistered land state land. Israel describes this as affirming an existing status rather than confiscating private property. Yet an absence of formal registration does not mean an absence of Palestinian ownership claims or long use.^[7] A classification that looks technical decides whose account of ownership is recognised.

On 25 June 2024, a declaration covered about 12,700 dunams (roughly 12.7 square kilometres) in the Jordan Valley, according to Peace Now’s report, which links the official notice and identifies a corridor between existing settlements.^[8] Nothing needs to be built for a designation like this to matter. It changes the legal basis on which future land use is authorised.

Registration extends the mechanism. In February 2026, the UN Secretary-General opposed Israel’s decision to resume a broader land-registration process in Area C, warning of Palestinian dispossession and expanded Israeli control.^[9] By 25 May, his later report records, the Civil Administration (the military-run body that administers the West Bank’s civilian affairs) and Israel’s Land Registration Authority had launched an online platform requiring people who claim rights in affected land to submit and substantiate those claims before Israeli authorities.^[10]

Registration can secure property in principle. What matters is who sets the evidentiary rules, whether claimants can obtain the documents and an effective remedy, and how unclaimed or disputed land is then allocated. The platform’s launch cannot show how many owners will lose land. Its setting, inside an existing system of settlement expansion, is why its distributional effects are the thing to watch.

Who holds the pen on planning

Planning rules decide what can happen even where ownership is undisputed. After 1967, military orders abolished the local planning committees that had represented Palestinians and transferred their powers to the Higher Planning Council, staffed exclusively by Israeli officers, according to a 2021 UN-Habitat account published by OCHA. It reported that Palestinian applications in Area C were routinely rejected because land was not zoned for building. Civil Administration data obtained by Peace Now showed 98 approvals from 4,422 Palestinian permit applications between 2009 and 2018. Of 109 community outline plans submitted by then, five had been approved.^[11]

Relief is possible. An At Tuwani plan submitted in 2011 received initial approval in December 2020, which could protect structures otherwise exposed to demolition.^[11] Outcomes depend on decisions, and Palestinian communities pursue every available route. The same case shows the constraint: a system that grants occasional relief still leaves one community’s growth secure and another’s subject to years of uncertainty.

Control over those decisions has itself moved. The Secretary-General’s September 2024 report describes the June 2023 simplification of settlement approvals and the expansion of Smotrich’s authority, then the May 2024 orders that kept security in the military chain while moving most responsibility for settlement advancement, land development and planning to civilian officials in the Defence Ministry.^[2] The name Civil Administration can conceal how much has left its military structure.

There is an important qualification. Yesh Din and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel challenged the transfer. Yesh Din’s case account records that the state modified the arrangements in July 2025, limiting some of the authority first granted, and that the High Court dismissed the petition in January 2026 on the basis of those changes. Yesh Din maintains that the wider transfer still entrenches annexation.^[12] An accurate account cannot simply repeat the original allegation of unchecked civilian power.

What remains is a question of accountability. Decisions about Palestinian land and development are now made by officials in an Israeli ministry, pursuing policies for which Israeli politicians answer to Israeli voters. Civilian officials alone do not prove annexation. The stronger evidence is the combination: their powers, the decisions they take, and the territorial objective their minister has openly advanced.

E1 and the space between cities

E1, east of Jerusalem near Ma’ale Adumim, shows that combination at work. Peace Now reported that the Higher Planning Council approved plans for 3,401 housing units in August 2025 and that a construction tender was published on 10 December; its January 2026 account links tender 460/2025 and records litigation against the plans.^[13] Approval and a tender are not construction, but they are the steps that turn a plan into building contracts.

The concern is more specific than an image of the West Bank sliced in half. A 2020 planning objection, prepared by architect Uri Reicher and filed by Peace Now and other organisations, argued that E1 would obstruct the development of the Ramallah–East Jerusalem–Bethlehem metropolitan area, which it identified as central to employment, transport and regional services.^[14] That expert objection explains why the location of development can matter more than its housing total.

A road letting vehicles travel between Palestinian towns would not answer it. Territorial continuity means access to land for homes and work, connections to an urban centre, and authority to plan growth. A population can stay connected by road while losing control of the land between its towns.

What security explains, and what it does not

Israel’s security and negotiation arguments deserve examination on their own terms. Its July 2023 submission to the ICJ objected to questions it regarded as prejudicial, emphasised Palestinian attacks and asserted that existing agreements required direct negotiations over settlements, borders and security.^[6] Those are real concerns about how the conflict ends. They do not explain why permanent civilian expansion is needed to protect anyone, or why restricting another population’s development should be the default until negotiations succeed.

Israeli courts have also shown that security language is not always a fiction. In Beit Sourik, decided on 30 June 2004, the High Court accepted that the barrier in that case was motivated by security rather than annexation, yet found parts of its route disproportionate because of their impact on Palestinian residents and required reconsideration.^[15] Security needs and excessive restrictions can coexist. The test is practical: does a measure answer an identified threat proportionately, or does a security justification protect a much broader arrangement of territorial advantage?

Nor is removal impossible. UNRWA’s contemporary account documents the 2005 evacuation of Gaza’s 21 settlements and the withdrawal from four in the northern West Bank.^[4] Houses, once built, can be taken down. The argument about permanence concerns the institutions and incentives that make reversal harder with each step.

The test for Australia

Security Council resolution 2334 reaffirmed that the settlements have no legal validity and called for settlement activity to cease. It called for violence against civilians, including terrorism, to be prevented, and it asked all states to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.^[16] Opposing settlements and protecting Israeli civilians are compatible obligations. The measure of Australian policy is whether its dealings actually draw that distinction, and whether its debates scrutinise land designations, planning control and transfers of authority as closely as a minister’s most inflammatory words.

The documents describe a sequence: designate land, constrain alternative development, consolidate governing authority and advance projects that organise space around settlements. Each step has its own record and its own limits. Together they explain how an interim arrangement can steadily erode the practical conditions for Palestinian self-determination. Reversal remains possible, but only through decisions that interrupt the process. Calling the occupation temporary does not make that interruption happen.