In a controversial step that analysts and regional observers warn further advances the de facto annexation of Israel’s occupied Palestinian West Bank, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Friday he has ordered the country’s military to draft a plan that would transfer all civilian law enforcement powers in the territory from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to national civilian police.
According to a statement from Katz’s office, the proposed restructuring would task civilian police with building a dedicated force to manage all civilian-related matters in the West Bank, while allowing the military to refocus its resources exclusively on counterterrorism operations targeting Palestinian groups and securing national borders and Israeli communities in the region. Katz argued that the shift aligns with Israel’s governing structure, noting that civilian police oversee civilian affairs in every other part of the State of Israel.
Notably, Friday’s announcement was rolled out without prior coordination with either the IDF or Israel’s national police force. Still, Israeli outlet Israel Hayom reported that military leadership has openly welcomed the proposal and has pushed for the administrative shift for weeks. The push comes in direct response to a request from IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, who has called for a reduction of the military’s growing non-combat workload in the West Bank amid plans to expand existing Israeli settlements and establish new outposts in the occupied territory.
Two weeks prior to Katz’s announcement, Zamir told the Israeli cabinet that the IDF’s civilian responsibilities in the West Bank have expanded far beyond the force’s core mission, particularly as new settlements are set to be constructed. He specifically pushed back against the requirement that IDF soldiers intervene to address unrest caused by extremist Israeli settlers accused of intimidating and attacking local Palestinian communities, saying the arrangement is untenable. While Zamir confirmed the military has worked alongside police on these matters, he argued it is past time for the IDF to end its involvement in civilian law enforcement tasks. As of Friday, military spokespersons confirmed the IDF has begun preliminary internal staff work to assess a potential redivision of authority between Israeli security bodies operating in the West Bank.
The announcement has already exposed internal political rifts within Israel’s governing coalition. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who holds oversight authority over the national police force, was not notified of Katz’s planned statement ahead of its public release. As of Saturday, Ben Gvir has not issued any public comment on the proposal. But far-right settler leaders have been quick to praise the announcement, calling for further steps to formalize Israeli control over the entire occupied territory.
Israel Ganz, head of the Regional Binyamin Council which represents Israeli settlements in the central West Bank, said Katz’s order should be followed by the formal cancellation of the 1993 Oslo Accords and the imposition of full Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. “The time has come to move from temporary management to the full application of Israeli law,” Ganz stated.
A critical detail that has amplified international and expert concern is that Katz’s statement applies to the entire West Bank, with no distinction drawn between the territory’s three administrative zones outlined in the Oslo Accords: Areas A and B, where the Palestinian Authority holds formal civilian control, and Area C, which remains under full Israeli civilian and military authority. While Israel has never formally announced a full annexation of the West Bank — a territory it has occupied militarily since the 1967 Six-Day War — regional and international policy experts have noted that the Israeli government has implemented a series of incremental measures over the past year that amount to de facto annexation. These measures include a consistent push to expand the role of Israeli civilian administrative bodies in the occupied territory while gradually rolling back the military’s formal authority over areas it has long controlled. Under both international law and Israeli domestic law, the IDF is recognized as the official occupying authority in the West Bank and holds all enforcement powers, including those covering civilian governance.
Katz’s announcement also comes against a backdrop of a sharp, well-documented surge in extremist settler violence targeting Palestinian communities across the West Bank. Just days before the defense minister’s statement, dozens of Israeli settlers besieged multiple Palestinian homes in the village of Qusra, located south of the West Bank city of Nablus. Despite public commitments from the IDF that it would remove the settlers from the site, the group remained in place as of Friday.
Veteran Ynet military correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai, who has covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, recently argued that the IDF, national police, and Israel’s internal Shin Bet security service have become unable to enforce rule of law in the West Bank. He wrote last week that a small faction of extremist settlers has effectively become the de facto sovereign in large swathes of the territory, with the IDF limited to securing the settlers’ presence and carrying out their demands. Responding to Katz’s announcement Friday, Ben-Yishai confirmed the plan amounts to a formalization of de facto annexation. He also raised questions about the legality of the proposed shift, and noted that the Israeli national police currently lacks the sufficient number of officers required to effectively take over civilian authority across the entire West Bank.