Photograph Source: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit photographer – CC BY-SA 3.0
It has been hot in Switzerland. Temperatures have hovered around 35C (95F) during recent peaks. One longs for cooler, even cold weather. And yet, when it comes to war, it is often hot conflicts that attract attention. What continues for years, even decades, can gradually become background. And as it does, what was once considered temporary and exceptional can begin to look normal and permanent. Israel’s recent announcement that authority in the West Bank will be transferred from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to Israeli police may seem like a small, technical decision. But its consequences could be far-reaching in Israel’s drive to create a Greater Israel.
Israel’s occupation of the West Bank since 1967 is moving towards permanence. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on August 14: “The IDF’s role is to fight Palestinian terrorism, focus on defending the borders and communities against threats, deal with the borders and the territory itself and with security threats to the settlements and the State of Israel, and not to chase after youths on the hills.”
Katz then added: “All responsibility for dealing with and enforcing [the law] concerning the communities and settlers and civilian matters will be transferred to the responsibility of the Israel Police.” David M. Halbfinger and Adam Rasgon reported in the New York Times that Katz declared it was “not the I.D.F’s role” and that it was unable “to address the enforcement of civil matters” in the West Bank in light of the “welcome increase” in the number of Israeli settlers there.
That transfer of power is another step in a process of making a temporary situation permanent and normal. “His [Katz’s] proposal … represents a turning point,” Aline Jaccottet wrote in Le Temps, arguing that transferring civil law enforcement from the army to a dedicated police force treats the Palestinian territories as Israeli national territory.
Under international humanitarian law, Israel, as the occupying power, has obligations toward the Palestinian civilian population. “By virtue of its status as an occupying Power, a State assumes a set of powers and duties with respect to the territory over which it exercises effective control. In this context, the occupying Power bears a duty to administer the territory for the benefit of the local population,” the International Court of Justice wrote in its Advisory Opinion of July 19, 2024, paragraph 105.
What happens when an occupation that is supposed to be temporary becomes increasingly normalized and institutionalized? In 1967, there were no Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Today, more than half a million Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, depending on the source and exactly what is counted. A U.N. agency’s most recent reporting says that since January 2023, more than 6,200 Palestinians have been displaced in the context of settler attacks and related access restrictions, with 47 communities fully displaced by early July 2026.
An occupation may last for years, even decades. But time does not turn occupation into sovereignty. Nor does it give the occupying power more rights simply because the occupation has become prolonged. Eminent jurists Georges Abi-Saab and Marcelo Kohen have argued that, in some circumstances, a prolonged occupation may itself become unlawful. The longer an occupation lasts, in other words, the harder it becomes to distinguish military occupation from ordinary government.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has noted, “The longer an occupation lasts, and the more extensive the authority exercised by the occupying power, the more the distinction between a military and an ordinary government becomes strained and difficult to perceive.”
The question is whether Israel considers the West Bank part of Israel. Mr. Ben-Gvir refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria, the Biblical names of the region, as have other Israeli leaders. But this is not simply a matter of terminology. In 2025, the Knesset advanced legislation to replace the term “West Bank” with “Judea and Samaria” in Israeli legislation, with supporters saying the change would recognize the Jewish people’s historical right to the land. Separately, in July, the Knesset voted in favor of a declaration calling for Israeli sovereignty to be applied to Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley. That declaration called Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley “an inseparable part of Eretz Israel” and urged the application of Israeli sovereignty there.
The language matters. Call it Judea and Samaria rather than the West Bank. Build more settlements. Move more Israeli civilians there. Transfer more authority from the military to civilian institutions. Then call it sovereignty. At what point does an occupation, supposedly temporary under international law, begin to be treated politically and administratively as part of Israel?
That is the slippery slope. And perhaps it is no longer so slippery. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) already found in 2024 that Israel’s policies and practices, including settlement expansion and the extensive application of Israeli domestic law in the West Bank, amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
“Israel’s extension of its domestic law to the West Bank, notably to the settlements and over the settlers … as well as its assumption of broader regulatory powers by virtue of the prolonged character of the occupation, entrenches its control over the occupied territory. Israel has also taken steps to incorporate the West Bank into its own territory,” the ICJ wrote in paragraph 173.
The recent normalization has not gone unchallenged. On August 20, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and other countries urged Israel to retract its plans for the settlement project and “end its expansion of settlements in the West Bank.” More than 100 former British and French diplomats have gone further, writing a letter to Emmanuel Macron and Andy Burnham saying that Palestine is “being erased in front of the world’s eyes,” and calling for stronger action.
An occupation does not become permanent in one dramatic act. It becomes permanent through a series of changes that gradually come to look normal. What is clear is that the continuing settlements and anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank are blatantly illegal, politically self-defeating and morally unjustified.
