The longest military occupation in modern history entered its 57th year last week. For some 20,500 days, Israel has occupied the Golan Heights, the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The inhabitants of these territories, who are meant to enjoy protection under international law, have endured martial law for each and every one of those days. Yet, for some time, occupation has barely sufficed as a description of the regime that governs their lives day in, day out. A new report from 17 Israeli human rights groups challenges this. It warns of “accelerated annexation” of the rest of the West Bank becoming a reality with a two-tier legal system. All these groups consider the situation to be one of apartheid. It should register as a shock to the international system. But has it? The sophistication of this annexation and regime of apartheid is clear. This regime was initially tested for 18 years on Palestinians inside Israel, refined and readied for later use. Israel has engaged in a great project of demographic reengineering of occupied territory. Israel has succeeded in inserting more than 750,000 Israeli civilians across occupied territory in more than 250 settlements. It has done so with a relatively low military footprint. When you drive around the West Bank, you pass relatively few Israeli military vehicles. It is a low-cost occupation, arguably one that is profitable. How has this been achieved? Firstly, Israeli governments of all hues and colors have consistently targeted control of the land. It is a settler colonial regime. At every stage since 1967, Israel has sought to colonize the land and shift the native Palestinian population into ever more crowded urban centers, while replacing them with constantly expanding colonies, known tamely as settlements. This process of land transfer has seen Israel confiscate more than 1 million dunams of Palestinian land. According to the new report, this has been recategorized as Israeli “state land.” It has allocated more than 99 percent of the West Bank’s occupied state land for Israeli use. Land and population transfers continue but, under the current extreme-right coalition, this is on steroids. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich last month proudly announced plans to fund the transfer of 500,000 additional settlers into the Occupied Territories. This will not happen all at once, but it demonstrates the scale of the ambition. Was there an outcry in Israel? No. It is no longer even controversial. But the plans are there to render Palestinians a minority, even in the West Bank. Smotrich and his allies are eying up major settlement plans. The US and some of its allies have tried to thwart them. A hold on the megaproject of E1 has resulted. But the settler lobby knows that, if it pushes for dozens of major projects at the same time, even the US cannot stymie them all. Settlement projects like E1 are never canceled — they just get delayed. The permit regime is extraordinary and is the key plank of the invisible part of the occupation and annexation. Chris Doyle Secondly, the fragmentation of Palestinians demographically and geographically gives Israel control. Gaza is cut off from the West Bank. Jerusalem is separated from the rest of the West Bank. While you can drive from any part of Area C to another, Palestinians in the West Bank are forced to survive in more than 227 disconnected parcels of land. Each one can be closed off from the others using a complex but effective network of barriers, obstacles and checkpoints. Protests in Nablus or Jenin mean the cities are just closed off, blockaded, just as Gaza has been. Journeying from one part of the West Bank to another is now an arduous process for Palestinians, though not settlers. Even if you are in Ramallah, getting to Bethlehem — being compelled to go round Jerusalem — is a time-consuming and fraught process. Many Palestinians no longer bother. Thirdly, the Israeli occupation exerts tight control through bureaucratic and administrative means. The permit regime is extraordinary and is the key plank of the invisible part of the occupation and annexation. Israeli settlers have full rights, while the Palestinians depend on occupier largesse to allow them a host of differing permits to travel, to work, to farm their land, to dig a well and to receive medical care, among other basics of day-to-day life. I heard from a former Israeli soldier whose role as a young man was to issue or not issue such permits. A farmer might ask for a permit to farm his land in the seam zone, the area between the separation wall and the Green Line. It would be the computer that determined if he met the criteria. It tested the Palestinian resilience. Would the farmer keep on trying to get the permit or would he give up and lose his lands when they were left uncultivated? Fourthly, the Israeli occupation uses force. Settler violence is an instrument of state policy. The state permits the settlers to be armed. The army not only does not prevent settlers from harassing, beating up and even killing Palestinians, but evidence increasingly shows that the army enables this. Finally, Israel abuses the law. It rejects the application of international law, of course. But it also introduced military law for Palestinians in 1967, while allowing Israeli settlers to exist under Israeli civil law. The use of martial law and military courts is a prime method for intimidating this captive population. Children, in particular, are targeted and, through the process of arrest, interrogation and detention, broken and taught the lesson that resisting the occupation is costly and futile. All of this is annexation — the application of Israeli law on occupied territory in a manner that discriminates against the non-Jewish population at every level. Never forget that Israel has already annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Netanyahu has pushed for overt annexation through the front door since 2017 and is now doing it through the back door as well. In his coalition agreement, this was explicit: “The prime minister will work toward the formulation and promotion of a policy whereby sovereignty is applied” to the West Bank. Yet the reality is that this is fiction. Annexation and the application of sovereignty has already happened. Israel controls and exploits the land, the borders, the resources and the people. It is time the world called this out. • Chris Doyle is director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding. He has worked with the council since 1993 after graduating with a first-class honors degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University. He has organized and accompanied numerous British parliamentary delegations to Arab countries. Twitter: @Doylech