Israel has taken yet another step toward the outright annexation of the West Bank. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's finance minister and the defense minister for the West Bank, shined an unsavory spotlight on his government's progress in the territories on Friday, June 21, in the shadow of the war in Gaza.

"I'm telling you, it's mega-dramatic (...). Such changes change the system's DNA," he said at a conference held on a Jewish settlers' farm near Qalqilya in the West Bank, in a recording released by the anti-colonial movement Peace Now. The "system" that the minister claims to be overthrowing is the multi-layered administration that governs the Palestinian territories, under the authority of the occupying army since its military conquest in 1967.

Smotrich maintains that he has transferred vast areas of authority from the hands of the military to those of the civilian government: "We created a separate civilian system," he said, at the risk of shattering the myth that the military occupation would be temporary, take into account the interests of the Palestinians and last until a negotiated settlement of the conflict was reached. For six decades, this legal framework has enabled Israel to claim that its presence in the territories was legitimate under international law, while at the same time waging a colonial war.

Smotrich's latest victory came on May 29, when the army appointed a civilian deputy under the general who heads the all-powerful "civil administration" of the territories − a military body despite its name. Hillel Roth, from the ultra-violent settlement of Yitzhar, educated in a radical religious school and the former treasurer of the Shomron regional council in the northern West Bank is a deputy in name only, since he is not answerable to the head of his administration.

"The powers are in the hands of Hillel Roth, all the powers: he signs the orders, he convenes the Higher Planning Committee, he declares state lands, (...) he signs expropriations for roads, everything is in his hands. All civil powers," said Smotrich during the conference.

Activist Yehuda Shaul, a fierce critic of the military occupation, said that Roth will be the leading authority on the status of land (private or so-called "state" land, military exercise zones and natural parks), as well as for the planning and construction of residential buildings and infrastructure, and for the "national parks" administered by Israel in the West Bank.

Smotrich has relished depriving the civilian administration of a large part of its prerogatives, by building the unprecedented ministry within the Defense Ministry, calling it the "Settlements Administration" and entrusting its general management to an old acquaintance, Eliyahu Yehuda − also a civilian.

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