geopolitics power

Annexation in Plain Sight

What happened

Israel's security cabinet secretly approved 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank in early April 2026, according to the watchdog group Peace Now. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly confirmed the move on April 13, calling it a 'historic achievement' aimed at preventing Palestinian statehood and achieving 'practical sovereignty on the ground.' The approvals bring the total number of settlements authorized under Netanyahu's current government to over 100. The EU condemned the decision. The Trump administration, which has previously said it opposes annexation, has not sanctioned Israel or taken any visible action in response.

Smotrich is annexing the West Bank one approval at a time while the US is militarily occupied with Iran, and he is doing it openly, describing his own goal as preventing Palestinian statehood, because he has correctly calculated that no one will stop him right now.

The Hidden Bet

The Trump administration's stated opposition to annexation is a real constraint on Israeli settlement expansion.

The administration has stated opposition in words but imposed no cost for the policy. Israel has expanded settlements at an accelerating pace under this administration. The pattern suggests the 'opposition' is rhetorical cover for US diplomatic audiences while functionally enabling the policy. Smotrich is a member of Netanyahu's coalition; disrupting the coalition would threaten the government. Netanyahu will not do that over settlements Washington hasn't actually punished.

750,000 settlers in the West Bank are a political constituency Trump has little reason to confront.

American evangelical supporters of Israel and the broader Israel lobby have significant weight in Trump's coalition. Any administration move that looked like pressuring Israel on settlements would generate immediate blowback from these constituencies. The political cost of enforcing the stated policy exceeds the political cost of ignoring it. This is a constraint on Trump, not a choice.

International condemnation will slow settlement construction.

EU condemnation has no enforcement mechanism. The OIC statement has no enforcement mechanism. The International Court of Justice's 2024 advisory opinion declaring all settlements illegal has no enforcement mechanism. Smotrich knows this. The decision was taken secretly in early April and only announced publicly two weeks later, which is not the behavior of a government that expects consequences.

The Real Disagreement

The genuine fork is between two defensible positions on what a two-state solution actually requires at this point. One view: Israel is foreclosing Palestinian statehood through facts on the ground, and the international community must impose real costs or accept permanent apartheid. The other view: Palestinian statehood was already a fiction after 2007 Hamas-Fatah split, and Israeli settlements are filling a political vacuum that Palestinian leadership has failed to fill. Neither view is entirely wrong. But Smotrich is not making a subtle argument; he is explicitly saying the goal is no Palestinian state. The question the international community refuses to answer is: at what settlement count does 'opposition' require action? The count is now over 100 under this government alone.

What No One Is Saying

The US is simultaneously conducting a naval blockade of Iran and enabling the annexation of the West Bank. Both actions have the same logic: they use military or economic force to impose unilateral outcomes that international law does not permit. The consistency is not an accident. It is a doctrine. The countries most loudly condemning Israel's settlements are the same ones that declined to impose costs for it while asking Washington to return to the Iran nuclear deal.

Who Pays

Palestinians in the West Bank

Ongoing; accelerates with each approval

Physical displacement as settler outposts expand; documented increase in settler violence against Palestinian villages; loss of agricultural land and water access; movement restrictions as settlement infrastructure requires new roads and checkpoints.

Palestinian Authority

Long-term erosion of institutional standing

Each settlement approval reduces the land area of any potential Palestinian state, making PA governance less credible to its own population and further undermining peace process legitimacy.

US credibility in Arab states

Midterm; becomes acute if formal annexation is declared

Arab governments that normalized relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords face domestic pressure as the gap between stated US opposition to annexation and actual US action grows. Gulf states needed that gap to justify normalization.

Scenarios

Creeping de facto annexation

Settlement approvals continue at current pace; no formal annexation declaration; international condemnation without consequences; Palestinian statehood becomes practically impossible without any single moment of reckoning.

Signal Watch for the total settler count to cross 800,000, which is the rough threshold where population distribution makes partition geometrically impossible.

Formal annexation declaration

Smotrich or Netanyahu declares portions of the West Bank formally annexed after the Iran conflict stabilizes; triggers formal EU sanctions and possible ICJ enforcement proceedings.

Signal Watch for Knesset legislation to apply Israeli civil law to specific West Bank areas, which is the legal mechanism for annexation.

US conditionality

Trump administration, facing pressure from Arab partners needed for post-Iran regional architecture, conditions future military aid on settlement freeze; Netanyahu faces coalition crisis.

Signal Watch for a State Department statement that goes beyond 'opposition' language to specify consequences.

What Would Change This

If the Trump administration imposed any concrete consequence for settlement expansion, including conditioning military aid, blocking specific settlement funding, or sanctioning Smotrich personally under the Magnitsky Act, the calculus would shift. None of these have happened.