Israeli war minister Israel Katz on Friday ordered the military to prepare a plan for transferring civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli police.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the decision followed criticism of the army’s handling of Israeli settlers who besieged a Palestinian home in the village of Qusra.
The war ministry said the police would establish a dedicated force to handle civilian matters.
However, Palestinian officials and political analysts described the structural shift as a dangerous acceleration of the Israeli regime’s efforts to annex Palestinian land and entrench an apartheid system.
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera that the settlers are the “spearhead in the process of annexation and Judaization”.
He drew direct historical parallels to the mass displacement of Palestinians, stating, “They repeat what the Zionist terror gangs did in 1948, like the Haganah and the Stern Gang.”
Barghouti warned that placing security in the hands of national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and illegal Israeli settlements under finance minister Bezalel Smotrich amounts to “handing over the West Bank to the settlers”.
He stressed that this is an open war on the population, adding, “The actual ruler in the West Bank is the known fascist terrorist Smotrich.”
Analysts said replacing military occupation law with domestic civilian law fundamentally alters the legal reality of the territory.
Mohanad Mustafa, an academic and researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the decision legally erases the borders.
“The government is dealing with the West Bank not as an occupied territory,” Mustafa said.
He explained that by transferring power to a civilian police force, “this means that the government has annexed the West Bank”.
MNA
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