Israel Is Officially Annexing the West Bank (from June '23)

International law stipulates that an occupying power—in this case, Israel—must advance the occupied territory’s interests during its temporary occupation. By transferring administrative powers in the West Bank from the military to an Israeli minister and the civil service, Israel is abdicating this duty not just in its actions—as it did long ago—but also on paper. This is because Israeli public servants are obligated and trained to advance Israeli interests alone.

The world’s silence in the face of these developments is a particularly dangerous manifestation of Israel’s exceptionalism in the international arena. The United States and other Western countries’ apathy toward Israel’s changing legal regime in the West Bank poses grave real-life consequences for Palestinians under occupation. But the international community’s blunder is not new. It has been a feature—not a bug—of the system since day one of Israel’s occupation.

The West’s silence also undermines its integrity in its fight against Russian expansion into Ukraine. The prohibition on unilateral annexation of an occupied territory is a key principle of the post-World War II rule-based order. Failing to hold Israel to account not only undercuts the West’s credibility but also has a destabilizing effect on the entirety of the international system. By giving Netanyahu a free pass, the international community is handing other leaders with expansionist tendencies—such as Putin—a recipe for how to forcefully acquire territory without consequence.

The high road to legal annexation is an official, public declaration, as Putin made when he annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. But annexation does not necessarily involve pomp and ceremony. It can happen in dull, windowless offices and through seemingly dreary administrative and bureaucratic actions.