Global & US Headlines
Israel Accelerates West Bank Annexation Push: 19 New Settlements OK’d Days After ‘Environmental Terrorism’ Emergency Decree
Within 72 hours, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz first branded Palestinian waste-burning a national-security threat and then secured cabinet approval for 19 additional Jewish settlements, tightening Israeli governmental control beyond the Green Line.
Focusing Facts
- Security cabinet quietly cleared 19 settlements on 11 Dec 2025—publicly revealed 21 Dec—lifting the official West Bank total from 141 to 210 (≈+49 %).
- 18 Dec 2025: Katz & Smotrich’s emergency plan authorises IDF seizure of Palestinian garbage trucks, ‘unlimited’ funding, and a new central-West-Bank landfill to halt waste fires labelled ‘environmental terrorism’.
- Two of the 19 newly authorised sites—Kadim and Ganim—reverse Israel’s own 2005 disengagement dismantlement.
Context
Tel Aviv’s one–two punch recalls Menachem Begin’s 1977–79 settlement surge after the Camp David Accords and the 1981 Golan annexation law: legislation and on-the-ground facts preceded diplomatic confrontation. Long-term, the moves reflect a steady pattern since Oslo’s 1993 handshake: create irreversible realities so any future border follows Israeli control lines, not the 1967 map. Labelling civilian pollution as ‘terrorism’ also echoes Britain’s 1936 ‘collective punishment’ ordinances in Mandate Palestine—administrative tools expanding sovereignty under the guise of security. On a 100-year horizon, this week may mark another ratchet in the incremental annexation of the West Bank; like the Allon Plan’s gradualism, each legalistic step seems small but cumulatively redraws the map, potentially foreclosing a two-state outcome and locking Israel and Palestinians into a single, contested polity—an outcome whose demographic and political ramifications will outlive the current leaders.
Perspectives
Israeli government officials and domestic outlets that quote them
e.g., Haaretz straight-news reports, The Times of Israel — They portray Palestinian waste-burning as “environmental terrorism” that endangers Israelis and justify sweeping security-style measures, while settlement expansion is presented as developing Israel’s ancestral land and erasing the Green Line. By securitising pollution and couching settlement growth in heritage terms, they deflect attention from Israel’s own environmental management failures and the settlements’ contested legality, advancing the governing coalition’s territorial agenda.
Foreign outlets stressing international law and Palestinian rights
e.g., Daily Sabah, India Today — They frame the 19 new West Bank settlements as illegal under international law and a deliberate move by Israel’s far-right ministers to block any future Palestinian state. Heavy focus on illegality and ‘colonial’ motives sidelines Israeli security arguments and may reflect these publications’ pro-Palestinian or anti-settlement editorial stance.