Autor: Manuel

Israel is accelerating its efforts to cement its permanent control over the West Bank through a number of sweeping legal and institutional changes, according to a new report from Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

The 87-page report, Legal Structures of Distinction, Separation, and Territorial Domination, describes the ways in which the Netanyahu government is rapidly building on a long-standing legal matrix that further threatens Palestinians’ right to self-determination. 

“These developments are not something new to us,” Dr. Suhad Bishara, Legal Director of Adalah and lead author of the report, told Mondoweiss. “All eyes are on Gaza, justifiably so,” she said. “However… it is important to highlight the intensity of the structural changes that have taken place since the current government took over in December 2022.”

“What is happening in the West Bank is dangerously fast-forwarding annexation policies in a blatant violation of international law,” Bishara said. “Israel is intensifying measures to change the status of the West Bank, the status of many Palestinians living in Area C who are subject to intensified displacement induced by settler violence and Israeli policies.” She said, “This is in addition to settler expansion and further restrictions on Palestinian development in the area.”

Thoroughly researched and footnoted, the report documents how the current extremist government has built on what Adalah describes as “foundational mechanisms through which Israel has entrenched a land regime that facilitates territorial domination and racial segregation.” 

Area C comprises over 60 percent of the West Bank, and is under full Israeli military control. 

Here are the mechanisms of territorial domination Adalah examines in these areas.

Civilian governance for Israeli settlers; military rule over Palestinians

Beginning in the late 1970s, Israel abandoned its security-based justifications for approving settlements and adopted a policy based on civil, not military grounds. The report describes how, soon after, the Civil Administration — the Israeli body governing the West Bank — was established to formalize the division between military and civilian affairs.

As a result, “Israel has steadily transferred governance over Israeli settlers in the West Bank from military to civilian control, entrenching permanent territorial dominance and greatly expanding the settlement enterprise,” according to the report.

Most recently, structural reforms — such as the appointment of Bezalel Smotrich to serve as both Finance Minister and a Minister in the Defense Ministry — have resulted in increasing legal authority for the pro-settler civil servants working with Smotrich in the West Bank. These reforms have cemented the two distinct legal structures that govern life in Palestinian villages and Israeli settlements: the former, in which the military rules, and the latter, administered according to Israeli law. 

1. Administration by local authorities

Adalah’s report dives into the weeds as it describes one of the more concerning mechanisms that reveals Israel’s intent to annex the whole of the West Bank. Having transitioned the settlements from military administration to civilian rule — and having handed over significant legal and administrative decision-making to pro-settler civil servants — Israel can argue that the settlements operate now under Israeli sovereignty. But applying Israeli law in occupied territory, Adalah maintains, is a violation of international human rights law and constitutes “a measure of de facto annexation.” 

2. Financial incentives for settlements 

Readers of the report won’t be surprised to learn that, as Adalah writes, “Israeli settlements receive extensive financial benefits through direct government subsidies, preferential policies, and financial incentives… [covering] multiple sectors, including land allocation, housing, infrastructure, and agriculture.” 

Still, it is remarkable—as documented in the Adalah report—how in contravention of international law, Israel continues each year to pour billions of shekels into the development of settlements in the West Bank. Readers of the report will learn of “the legal mechanisms behind these incentives and how Israeli law facilitates their distribution.” 

3. Declaring State land 

According to Adalah, Israel’s designation of State Land in the West Bank is “the primary legal mechanism through which Israeli authorities have taken possession of Palestinian land since the late 1970s.” Those already familiar with Israel’s use of this means of de facto annexation will be surprised by the extraordinary amount of Palestinian land so designated. The report includes information obtained by Peace Now through a Freedom of Information Act request that shows a shocking fact: in under a one-year period, Israel has designated more Palestinian land as State Land than it had in an 18-year period.

From 1998 to 2016, just over 21,000 dunams were declared as State Land. But in just over nine months (from the end of February 2024 through early December 2024), over 24,200 dunams were declared as State Land. This acceleration is historically unprecedented.

The planning system in Area C

Adalah includes an entire section on the legal and structural framework in place in Area C to further expand Israel’s settlement project, fulfilling one of the Netanyahu government’s guiding principles shared the day before his swearing-in as Prime Minister in December 2022: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” promising to expand settlements throughout “Judea and Samaria,” the Israeli term for the occupied West Bank. 

Paralleling the judgments of the ICJ, UN experts, and international, Palestinian, and Israeli human rights groups, the report ends by listing the five international crimes that Adalah finds Israel guilt of: violations of International Humanitarian Law; the deepening of the illegal mechanism of de facto annexation; the denial of Palestinian people’s right to self-determination; the deepening of the apartheid system in the occupied Palestinian territory; and the commission of war crimes and crimes of aggression on the part of Israel.

The most recent newsletter from Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO, describes Israel’s expanding control over illegally annexed East Jerusalem. Asked to comment, Tess Miller, Public Outreach staff at Ir Amim (“City of Nations” or “City of Peoples” in Hebrew) told Mondoweiss that “the mechanisms of displacement that we monitor and advocate against within Jerusalem are not separate from the mechanisms seen today in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“What we are witnessing,” Miller said, “time after time, place after place, is violent control granted to those willing to advance the state’s agenda of expanding Jewish presence and diminishing Palestinian presence.” Ir Amim’s newsletter documents home demolitions, evictions, and starkly discriminatory housing and land confiscation policies.

“Together,” Miller said, “they all contribute to the accelerating erasure of the Palestinian people from their own cities, neighborhoods, and lands — enabled by the complicity of an increasingly radicalized Israeli public and the international community’s persistent refusal to take meaningful action.”

According to Adalah’s Dr. Bishara, it is hoped that the Adalah report, read by advocates for Palestinian rights, stakeholders, and states alike, “will generate international pressure against these long-term changes in the West Bank that violate international law and threaten the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.”

Israel is accelerating its efforts to cement its permanent control over the West Bank through a number of sweeping legal and institutional changes, according to a new report from Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

The 87-page report, Legal Structures of Distinction, Separation, and Territorial Domination, describes the ways in which the Netanyahu government is rapidly building on a long-standing legal matrix that further threatens Palestinians’ right to self-determination. 

“These developments are not something new to us,” Dr. Suhad Bishara, Legal Director of Adalah and lead author of the report, told Mondoweiss. “All eyes are on Gaza, justifiably so,” she said. “However… it is important to highlight the intensity of the structural changes that have taken place since the current government took over in December 2022.”

“What is happening in the West Bank is dangerously fast-forwarding annexation policies in a blatant violation of international law,” Bishara said. “Israel is intensifying measures to change the status of the West Bank, the status of many Palestinians living in Area C who are subject to intensified displacement induced by settler violence and Israeli policies.” She said, “This is in addition to settler expansion and further restrictions on Palestinian development in the area.”

Thoroughly researched and footnoted, the report documents how the current extremist government has built on what Adalah describes as “foundational mechanisms through which Israel has entrenched a land regime that facilitates territorial domination and racial segregation.” 

Area C comprises over 60 percent of the West Bank, and is under full Israeli military control. 

Here are the mechanisms of territorial domination Adalah examines in these areas.

Civilian governance for Israeli settlers; military rule over Palestinians

Beginning in the late 1970s, Israel abandoned its security-based justifications for approving settlements and adopted a policy based on civil, not military grounds. The report describes how, soon after, the Civil Administration — the Israeli body governing the West Bank — was established to formalize the division between military and civilian affairs.

As a result, “Israel has steadily transferred governance over Israeli settlers in the West Bank from military to civilian control, entrenching permanent territorial dominance and greatly expanding the settlement enterprise,” according to the report.

Most recently, structural reforms — such as the appointment of Bezalel Smotrich to serve as both Finance Minister and a Minister in the Defense Ministry — have resulted in increasing legal authority for the pro-settler civil servants working with Smotrich in the West Bank. These reforms have cemented the two distinct legal structures that govern life in Palestinian villages and Israeli settlements: the former, in which the military rules, and the latter, administered according to Israeli law. 

1. Administration by local authorities

Adalah’s report dives into the weeds as it describes one of the more concerning mechanisms that reveals Israel’s intent to annex the whole of the West Bank. Having transitioned the settlements from military administration to civilian rule — and having handed over significant legal and administrative decision-making to pro-settler civil servants — Israel can argue that the settlements operate now under Israeli sovereignty. But applying Israeli law in occupied territory, Adalah maintains, is a violation of international human rights law and constitutes “a measure of de facto annexation.” 

2. Financial incentives for settlements 

Readers of the report won’t be surprised to learn that, as Adalah writes, “Israeli settlements receive extensive financial benefits through direct government subsidies, preferential policies, and financial incentives… [covering] multiple sectors, including land allocation, housing, infrastructure, and agriculture.” 

Still, it is remarkable—as documented in the Adalah report—how in contravention of international law, Israel continues each year to pour billions of shekels into the development of settlements in the West Bank. Readers of the report will learn of “the legal mechanisms behind these incentives and how Israeli law facilitates their distribution.” 

3. Declaring State land 

According to Adalah, Israel’s designation of State Land in the West Bank is “the primary legal mechanism through which Israeli authorities have taken possession of Palestinian land since the late 1970s.” Those already familiar with Israel’s use of this means of de facto annexation will be surprised by the extraordinary amount of Palestinian land so designated. The report includes information obtained by Peace Now through a Freedom of Information Act request that shows a shocking fact: in under a one-year period, Israel has designated more Palestinian land as State Land than it had in an 18-year period.

From 1998 to 2016, just over 21,000 dunams were declared as State Land. But in just over nine months (from the end of February 2024 through early December 2024), over 24,200 dunams were declared as State Land. This acceleration is historically unprecedented.

The planning system in Area C

Adalah includes an entire section on the legal and structural framework in place in Area C to further expand Israel’s settlement project, fulfilling one of the Netanyahu government’s guiding principles shared the day before his swearing-in as Prime Minister in December 2022: “The Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” promising to expand settlements throughout “Judea and Samaria,” the Israeli term for the occupied West Bank. 

Paralleling the judgments of the ICJ, UN experts, and international, Palestinian, and Israeli human rights groups, the report ends by listing the five international crimes that Adalah finds Israel guilt of: violations of International Humanitarian Law; the deepening of the illegal mechanism of de facto annexation; the denial of Palestinian people’s right to self-determination; the deepening of the apartheid system in the occupied Palestinian territory; and the commission of war crimes and crimes of aggression on the part of Israel.

The most recent newsletter from Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO, describes Israel’s expanding control over illegally annexed East Jerusalem. Asked to comment, Tess Miller, Public Outreach staff at Ir Amim (“City of Nations” or “City of Peoples” in Hebrew) told Mondoweiss that “the mechanisms of displacement that we monitor and advocate against within Jerusalem are not separate from the mechanisms seen today in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“What we are witnessing,” Miller said, “time after time, place after place, is violent control granted to those willing to advance the state’s agenda of expanding Jewish presence and diminishing Palestinian presence.” Ir Amim’s newsletter documents home demolitions, evictions, and starkly discriminatory housing and land confiscation policies.

“Together,” Miller said, “they all contribute to the accelerating erasure of the Palestinian people from their own cities, neighborhoods, and lands — enabled by the complicity of an increasingly radicalized Israeli public and the international community’s persistent refusal to take meaningful action.”

According to Adalah’s Dr. Bishara, it is hoped that the Adalah report, read by advocates for Palestinian rights, stakeholders, and states alike, “will generate international pressure against these long-term changes in the West Bank that violate international law and threaten the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.”

In what has been described as a “barrage of attacks on workers,” the U.S. Department of Labor under President Donald Trump is planning to overhaul dozens of rules that protect workers from exploitation and wage theft.

The administration announced this month that it planned to change over 60 regulations it deems “unecessary” burdens to businesses and economic growth.

According to an analysis released Tuesday by labor policy experts at the Century Foundation—senior fellows Julie Su and Rachel West and director of economy and jobs Andrew Stettner—most of the changes “reverse critical standards that ensure workers get a just day’s pay and come home healthy and safe.”

In one of the most sweeping changes, the department plans to reverse a 2013 rule that extended minimum wage and overtime protections to home healthcare workers.

These workers, who care for elderly and other medically frail individuals, already make less than $17 an hour on average.

Stettner told Common Dreams that the changes will “suppress wages” and allow agencies to “put the screws on workers to work 50- or 60-hour weeks.”

The Trump administration is also rolling back a Biden-era rule that banned bosses from paying subminimum wages to disabled employees.

This discriminatory practice has been on the wane due to state-level bans in 15 states. But in the absence of a federal ban, nearly 40,000 employees—most of whom have intellectual disabilities—still received less than the federal minimum wage as of 2024.

The Century Foundation report says that by ending the rule, the Trump administration would be once again “relegating workers with disabilities to jobs that pay as little as pennies per hour.”

The department is also taking a hatchet to workers’ rights and safety. Another major change it proposed would do away with protections for seasonal migrant farmworkers under the H-2A visa program who raise complaints about wage and hour violations.

It was commonplace for farm owners to take advantage of these seasonal employees, whose legal status was tied to their work, and who therefore risked deportation if they lost their jobs.

Cases of exploitation, however, declined to an all-time low after the Biden administration introduced the rule, which banned employers from firing, disciplining, or otherwise retaliating against workers who attempted to participate in collective bargaining.

“These reforms protected the rights of farmworkers in the H-2A program to speak out individually and collectively against mistreatment and prevented employers from arbitrarily firing them from their jobs,” the report says.

The department also proposed weakening the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) general duty clause, which allows businesses to be punished for putting their employees in dangerous situations. The proposed change would exempt many jobs that are deemed “inherently risky” from protection.

The administration described it as a way to prevent OSHA from cracking down on workplace injuries among athletes and stuntmen.

However, Stettner suggested that the broad language could allow the administration to go much further in defining what is considered “inherently risky.” The report notes that the administration is “crowdsourcing” suggestions from employers about what other occupations to exempt.

“The employer community, they’re jumping onto this,” Stettner said. “They’re telling their members to write in to the Department of Labor about other inherently dangerous occupations they should except from the general duty clause.”

The authors pointed out that the administration has previously rolled back restrictions meant to protect workers from heat-related stress on the job, which results in more than 600 deaths and over 25,000 injuries each year.

As the administration pushes to expand coal mining, it is also weakening protections for the miners themselves. After laying off most of the employees at OSHA’s research arm—which monitors cases of black lung disease—earlier this year, it is now weakening safety requirements to prevent roof falls, mine explosions, and exposure to toxic silica.

“The DOL’s role should be to protect the most vulnerable workers: farmworkers, people with disabilities, people that have suffered discrimination,” Stettner said. “They’re showing their true colors as an anti-worker administration.”