"Some time later there was an incident involving a vineyard belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite. The vineyard was in Jezreel, close to the palace of Ahab king of Samaria" (1 Kings 21 )
Annus Mirabilis
Actions by the Israeli Government to Annex the West Bank
2023-2025
A joint report by Peace Now and Kerem Navot examines profound changes in the West Bank brought about by Israel's 37th government since December 2022. The report concludes that the government has advanced de facto annexation at an unprecedented pace. It has done so through structural governance changes, settlement expansion, the retroactive authorization of outposts, land seizures, the expulsion of Palestinian communities, and increased Israeli control in areas previously under Palestinian Authority responsibility.
The current government has transformed Israel's control mechanisms in the West Bank. The key change was the transfer of broad civilian powers from the Civil Administration and the military chain of command to Minister Bezalel Smotrich and the Settlement Administration within the Ministry of Defense. Smotrich described this as "changing the system's DNA."
The new authority covers planning and construction, land registration and management, infrastructure, roads, nature reserves, archaeology, and enforcement. This shift created a
new civilian-political mechanism effectively controlled by the government's most extreme elements. It enables rapid and systematic advancement of annexation objectives while bypassing the limited checks previously in place within the military and legal systems.
In addition to this structural change, the government established and strengthened the Ministry of Settlement and National Missions, led by Orit Strook. This ministry serves as a governmental mechanism for channeling hundreds of millions of shekels to organizations involved in settlement expansion and land takeover in the West Bank.
These budgets, alongside security and infrastructure budgets, help establish and entrench illegal outposts, particularly farm outposts, many of whose residents are involved in violence and the expulsion of Palestinian communities.
A key indicator of recent changes is renewed settlement activity in the northern West Bank. The government effectively lifted the ban on Israelis entering areas evacuated under the "Disengagement". It resumed efforts to establish the settlements of Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim, and Kadim, as well as additional settlements and outposts, in the Jenin and Nablus regions.
Simultaneously, the government is promoting tourism projects and archaeological sites, such as Sebastia and the Mas'udiya railway station, as part of a broader effort to shape the northern West Bank.
The report also points to a dramatic shift in planning. In June 2023, the government removed the requirement for the Minister of Defense's approval at each stage of settlement construction planning. It transferred authority over the pace of these plans to Smotrich.
As a result, over the past three years, plans for 40,064 new settlement housing units were advanced, supporting potential future growth of 160,000 to 200,000 settlers. In 2025 alone, 27,941 units were advanced, more than doubling the previous annual record.
One of the most significant approved plans is for the E1 area, which is expected to fragment the West Bank further and severely undermine the possibility of developing Palestinian territorial continuity between Ramallah, East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem.
While advancing official construction, the government is also promoting the retroactive authorization and development of illegal outposts. In May 2024, a list of 70 outposts was published, and Smotrich instructed them to be funded and developed, despite their illegality. Many of these outposts are focal points of settler violence.
Over the past three years, 185 new outposts were established, including approximately 130 farm outposts and "hilltops."
The pace of establishment increased from year to year, indicating an increasingly professionalized mechanism of land takeover that exploits the war and the fact that, in practice, there is no enforcement against Israeli construction, in order to create new facts on the ground.
Farm outposts play a central role in expulsion and dispossession. According to our assessment, farm outposts currently effectively control more than one million dunams — approximately 18% of the West Bank.
In 2025 alone, approximately 300,000 dunams were added to the areas settlers took control of through farm outposts. Only approximately 40% of these areas are defined by the Civil Administration as "state land"; the rest are private land, waqf land, or areas whose status has not been mapped. This means that the mechanisms of grazing, violence, and denial of access enable a de facto takeover of lands that cannot officially be allocated to settlers.