Roving Periscope: Ahead of Trump’s Feb 19 BoP meet, Israel moves to ‘annex’ West Bank
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Days before US President Donald Trump opens the first meeting of his Board of Peace (BoP) on Gaza affairs in Washington on February 19, Israel moved swiftly to what the Middle East called “systematizing dispossession” of Palestinians in the West Bank area, the media reported on Monday.
Israel’s fresh move to resume the land registration processes in the ‘occupied’ West Bank for the first time since 1967 will facilitate the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians in violation of international law, Israeli rights groups were quoted as saying.
The land registration process – also known as settlement of land title – has been reinstated after nearly six decades, following the government’s approval on Sunday of a proposal submitted by far-right Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Justice Yariv Levin, and Minister of Defence Israel Katz.
While Israel has increased the confiscation of Palestinian land through military orders, with the activity reaching record levels in 2025, the new move gives Israel a legal avenue that “systematizes the dispossession of Palestinian land to further Israeli settlement expansion and cement the apartheid regime”, Bimkom, an Israeli human rights organisation that focuses on land and housing rights, said in a statement.
Michal Braier, head of research at Bimkom, said land registration will be inaccessible to large segments of the Palestinian population who never had their land formally registered, or who may fail to prove ownership, Al Jazeera reported.
In the West Bank, land registration under the Jordanian Administration – which followed British Mandate rule from 1949 to 1967 – covered only about 30 percent of the total area. Because of this, nearly 70 percent of the West Bank is “completely unregistered”, Braier said, making it “very hard to determine who actually owns the land.”
The government’s decision set as an objective the settlement of 15 percent of unregistered West Bank land within four years. To this end, it specified competent authorities, established a dedicated administrative unit and allocated funds under the 2026 budgetary law, which has yet to be approved.
Even for those Palestinians whose land was registered, “the legal bar for proving land ownership is very, very high, in a way that most Palestinians won’t have the proper documents to prove it”, said Braier.
“Full annexation”
In 1968, Israeli occupation authorities froze most land settlement procedures in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, making transfer of ownership down the family line hard to prove for Palestinians.
Moreover, legal documents could have been lost or stored in homes that are now out of reach to Palestinian refugees displaced by the Arab–Israeli war (1948-49) – when the newly-founded Israel seized control of 77 percent of Palestine– and in the Six Day War of 1967, which ended with Israel capturing the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria, while occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
The Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said the newly reinstated process of land registration amounts to a “full annexation” of Palestinian land.
“This is a way for Israel to take control over the West Bank,” Hagit Ofran, a Peace Now member, said. “The government is asking for papers that are dating back to the British Mandate or to the Jordanian time 100 years ago.”
“This is something that, very rarely, Palestinians will be able to prove, and therefore, by default, the land will be registered under (Israel’s) name,” she added.
In January, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition opposing the resumption of the land registration process, filed by local human rights groups Bimkom, Yesh Din, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and HaMoked. The court deemed it “premature” to rule on the implementation of the government’s decision.
“Totally invalid”
Israeli authorities have provided few details on how the process will unfold. Yet, a similar scenario has already played out in occupied East Jerusalem, where the settlement of land title that began in 2018 resulted in the expropriation of Palestinian land. Only 1 percent of the East Jerusalem land registered for ownership between 2018 and 2024 was registered to Palestinians, while the rest came under the control of the Israeli state or private Israeli owners.
The move expanded Israel’s de facto annexation over East Jerusalem in breach of international law, including, most recently, an advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024.
In its landmark ruling, the ICJ found that Israel’s “expropriation of land and properties, transfer of populations, and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section are totally invalid and cannot change that status.”
More broadly, it ruled that Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory – comprised of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – was unlawful, and must be terminated “as rapidly as possible.”
Braier said the Israeli government’s decision was its latest move expand control over Palestinian territory in breach of international law.
“The government is not hiding its intentions. They want to expand settlements and push Palestinians into as small an area as possible.”
Gaza-BoP
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump on Sunday said member-states of the so-called Board of Peace, which he heads, have pledged more than USD 5 billion for Gaza humanitarian relief and reconstruction efforts, and committed thousands of personnel to a proposed force that would assume security responsibilities in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.
A ceasefire came into effect in Gaza in October 2025 after Trump unveiled his 20-point peace plan but Israel, which controls more than half of Gaza’s territory, continued to bomb the enclave. In the two years of war in Gaza, which was triggered by Palestinian terror organization Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed, at least 75,000 Gazans were killed in counter-attack, a vast majority of them women and children.
Trump said the BoP members would join him at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington on February 19. At the meeting, “we will announce that Member States have pledged more than $5 BILLION DOLLARS toward the Gaza Humanitarian and Reconstruction efforts, and have committed thousands of personnel to the International Stabilization Force (ISF) and Local Police to maintain Security and Peace for Gazans,” he wrote on social media.
According to his 20-point plan, the ISF would be deployed to take charge of Gaza’s security and train Palestinian police personnel, while the enclave would be administrated by a new technocratic government, under the guidance of the BoP. The Board’s executive core has eight members, including Chairman Trump. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The Trump peace plan also calls on Hamas to disarm itself. “Very importantly, Hamas must uphold its commitment to Full and Immediate Demilitarization. The Board of Peace will prove to be the most consequential International Body in History, and it is my honor to serve as its Chairman,” he added.
