Sunday’s decision by the Israeli government to hand over full and sole authority for the approval of building plans for settlements in the occupied West Bank to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — a settler himself and a notorious religious ultranationalist — can only be interpreted as a dangerous and alarming evolution, if not a mutation, in Israel’s encroachment on what remains of the territory. The implications of this decision, which is at the heart of the coalition agreement that Benjamin Netanyahu committed to when he allied himself with Israel’s far-right parties, will be felt immediately. Smotrich had insisted on being named as a minister in the Ministry of Defense last year, which allowed him to take over from the defense minister all responsibilities pertaining to sanctioning the building of new settlements in the West Bank. Almost immediately, Israel announced plans to build more than 4,500 additional units in a clear violation of commitments made this year in Aqaba and Sharm El-Sheikh. For starters, this means that Smotrich can now approve and speed up the building of settlements, especially in Area C, which covers at least 60 percent of the total area of the West Bank and is under Israeli control as per the Oslo Accords. Smotrich can decide, unilaterally, to impose Israeli law there — the area has 400,000 illegal settlers and is home to more than 300,000 Palestinians. This will be a snap, direct and illegal annexation of occupied Palestinian territories. Since 2000, Israel has reoccupied most of the West Bank in direct violation of previous agreements and understandings reached with the Palestinian Authority under US auspices. To put this in perspective, by the end of 2022, the West Bank had about 199 settlements and 220 outposts, housing more than 600,000 settlers. And as of 2021, the area of the Israeli settlements was about 201.1 sq. km, representing 3.6 percent of the total area of the West Bank. The annexation of Area C will dwarf the current percentage. The roots of Israel’s intention to annex major chunks of the West Bank after the 1967 occupation can be traced back to the Allon Plan Osama Al-Sharif Smotrich will also approve the building of new Jewish-only roads, while erasing any legal distinctions between privately owned Palestinian lands and state-owned lands. The pace of colonizing what remains of Palestinian territory will accelerate at an unprecedented level. The move, which will surely be condemned by the international community but will go ahead unhindered, renders the two-state solution a relic and ends any realistic goal of creating a contiguous Palestinian state in the future. There are at least four indisputable facts about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, which is 56 years old. First, Israel has never intended to and will never carry out a full withdrawal from the West Bank including East Jerusalem, which it has already annexed, for several reasons. Before the rise of the religious far right, secular parties put forward several excuses for not withdrawing, such as the need to safeguard Israel’s national security by controlling territories from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. Later, they cited the takeover by force by militant group Hamas of the Gaza Strip from the PA and claimed that such a scenario could repeat itself in the West Bank. Second, Israel’s annexation of the West Bank through settlement building has been going on under various Israeli governments and has never been a divisive issue for major parties and coalitions. In fact, in September 1967, three months after Israel occupied the West Bank, the Labor government allowed Jewish settlers to build a settlement near Hebron known as Kfar Etzion. Many settlements began as military outposts and later expanded and were populated with “civilian” inhabitants, although the definition of civilian is controversial, since the majority of Israelis are required to serve in the army and remain on call afterward as reservists. The roots of Israel’s intention to annex major chunks of the West Bank after the 1967 occupation can be traced back to the Allon Plan, which proposed annexing East Jerusalem, the Etzion bloc and the Jordan Valley. After the historic victory of the Likud in 1977, the new government sanctioned settlement in other parts of the West Bank by radical organizations like Gush Emunim and the Jewish Agency. Since then, all Israeli governments have supported colonizing the West Bank, especially in areas surrounding East Jerusalem. Israel will never cease and desist unless the US steps in forcibly and decisively, and that is a risk no American politician is willing to take Osama Al-Sharif Third, for this government and the Israeli far right in general, the Jewishness of the whole of historical Palestine — and beyond in some cases — is an ideological tenet based on a mixture of religious and ultranationalist beliefs. That is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. The settlers have become an important voting bloc that conservative and right-wing parties need in election cycles. So have the cluster of small religious parties that support colonizing all occupied territories and are changing the demographic makeup of Israeli society. Fourth, while support for Palestinian rights has picked up in Western countries, especially in universities and among the youth, the reality is that Israel’s influence in Western governments and legislatures, especially in the US, Germany and the UK, remains high and has not been affected by its illegal settlement activities or its crimes against the Palestinians. Furthermore, the unconditional normalization of ties between Israel and certain Arab countries emboldened Israeli governments and did not affect Israel’s land grab policy or its dispossession of the Palestinians. Israel will never cease and desist unless the US steps in forcibly and decisively, and that is a risk no American president, politician or lawmaker is willing to take because of the huge influence the Israeli lobby has on American politics. Even then, it would require the international community to do what seems an impossible feat: to hold Israel accountable for its documented, continuous and defiant crimes and violations. That has not happened yet and is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Meanwhile, the only real obstacle standing in the way of Israel’s plan to carry out its evil designs, which include erasing the Palestinian identity, are the Palestinians themselves. If the international community is unable and unwilling to take Israel head-on now, then the least it can do is to support the steadfastness of the Palestinians on their native land. Failing to do so makes us all accomplices in a blatant ethnic cleansing crime. Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman. Twitter: @plato010 Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point of view