The Annexation of the West Bank Is Complete | Jasper Nathaniel

In May 2025, Smotrich gained cabinet approval for Israel’s first-ever land registration drive in the West Bank, a process that formally maps, verifies, and records ownership claims, and reclassifies any land without official documentation as belonging to the state. The campaign functions as a legal mechanism for large-scale dispossession, enabling Israel to claim vast areas of Palestinian-held land that were never formally registered, largely because Israel froze the process in 1968. The same cabinet decision declared the PA’s parallel registration efforts legally void, instructed Israeli forces to block Palestinian officials and surveyors from the field, and ordered the IDF, Shin Bet, and Mossad to gather intelligence on funding for the project so the Finance Ministry could deduct those amounts from tax revenues owed to the PA.

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