A prominent Israeli anti-settlement advocacy group, Peace Now, has issued a damning new report accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government of carrying out a coordinated, undeclared campaign to annex the occupied West Bank in violation of the decades-old Oslo Accords, the landmark 1990s framework that established a temporary power-sharing arrangement between Israel and the Palestinian people.
Peace Now, which has long tracked Israeli settlement expansion and violations of interim agreements in the West Bank, outlined a series of interconnected steps the administration has taken to extend Israeli civilian control, expand illegal settlements, and systematically erode the authority of the Palestinian Authority across all regions of the West Bank. The report, which was first obtained and published by Israeli outlet Ynet on Tuesday, warns that these incremental actions put Israeli security at grave risk by breaking long-standing international commitments.
“Netanyahu’s government is playing with fire, disregarding its international commitments and endangering Israel’s security – all in order to take control of more territory and land in the West Bank,” the movement wrote in its findings.
One of the most consequential policy shifts came in February of this year, when Israel’s security cabinet approved expanding the authority of the Israeli Civil Administration – a department within Israel’s defense ministry that manages civilian affairs in occupied territories – to enforce regulations and oversee environmental protection, water management, and archaeological projects in West Bank Areas A and B. Previously, Israeli civilian interventions in these zones were largely restricted, even as Israeli military operations have frequently been carried out there for years.
Israeli government officials defended the move, framing it as a necessary step to mitigate environmental risks and prevent damage to culturally significant heritage sites. But Peace Now argues the broad wording of the new regulatory framework gives Israeli civilian authorities carte blanche to interfere with nearly all Palestinian construction projects across most of the West Bank.
To understand the significance of this shift, it is necessary to revisit the terms of the 1995 Oslo II Accords, which divided the West Bank into three administrative zones as a temporary interim arrangement that remains in place decades later: Area A, which contains major Palestinian population centers and is designated to fall under full Palestinian Authority control for both civil governance and internal security; Area B, which includes smaller towns and rural communities, where the Palestinian Authority manages civil affairs while security responsibilities are split between Israel and the Palestinians; and Area C, which makes up roughly 60 percent of the total West Bank territory, is under full Israeli civil and security control, and hosts the vast majority of Israeli settlements and military outposts built on seized Palestinian land.
In June, the Civil Administration moved to strip the Palestinian municipal government of Hebron – a flashpoint city in the southern West Bank – of its broad planning and construction authority over territory surrounding Israeli settlements and several key holy sites located in the city’s central district. Just one month later, in July, the Israeli military issued formal land requisition orders seizing Palestinian private property inside Area A to build a new road connecting two existing Israeli settlements. Peace Now notes that this marks the first time since the Oslo Accords were signed that Israel has used military seizure orders in Area A for an explicitly civilian settlement purpose, rather than for officially declared military needs.
The advocacy group’s researchers also documented at least 23 new unauthorized settler outposts established in Area B over the past 30 months. Even in rare cases where the Israeli military removes these illegal outposts, Peace Now found, settlers quickly return to rebuild and expand the sites, often adding permanent concrete structures. These outposts have been paired with the construction of unauthorized access roads, the seizure of critical Palestinian water sources, and the forced displacement of local Palestinian communities. In addition, settlers have taken over abandoned Palestinian homes in both Areas B and C after original residents were forced to flee their properties following repeated violent attacks by Israeli settler groups.
Crucially, the report emphasizes that these actions are not random, isolated incidents: instead, they form a deliberate, coordinated state policy whose end goal is to force the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, create widespread political chaos across the occupied territories, and clear the way for further Israeli settlement expansion deep into Palestinian population centers across the West Bank. Beyond territorial changes, the report adds, the government is waging a consistent, organized campaign to weaken the Palestinian Authority across economic, political, and security domains.
One of the most powerful tools the Israeli government uses to pressure the Palestinian Authority is the withholding of tax and customs revenues that Israel collects on the Palestinian government’s behalf under the 1994 Paris Protocol economic agreement. These revenues add up to roughly 11 billion Israeli shekels, equal to around $3.66 billion, annually, and historically make up more than 60 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s total operating budget, per Ynet data.
Peace Now’s analysis found that only around half of the funds owed to the Palestinian Authority have been transferred by the current Netanyahu government between 2022 and 2025. As of June 2025, no funds have been transferred at all, according to the report.
While the Israeli government has not formally taken legislative action to abolish the Oslo Accords, officially annex the entire West Bank, or dissolve the Palestinian Authority, Peace Now argues that the cumulative effect of all these incremental measures adds up to a process of undeclared de facto annexation on the ground.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right proponent of full West Bank annexation, rejected the report’s criticism and instead framed its findings as a victory for the current administration. “What they call ‘the erosion of Oslo’ we call correcting an injustice resulting from 30 years of neglect,” he told Ynet. “What they call ‘de facto annexation’ we call establishing Israel’s security belt. I am proud of the settlement revolution I have led to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state in the heart of the country. This is only the beginning.”