Bezalel Smotrich, a champion of Israeli settlement in the Palestinian territories and now finance minister, has never been apprehensive about his beliefs and intentions.
In 2017, when he was a back-bencher of the Habayit Hayehudi party, he published what he titled the "Decisiveness Plan" for annexing and taking control over the West Bank.
He wrote, “This goal… will be realized via a political-legal act of imposing sovereignty on all Judea and Samaria, and with concurrent acts of settlement: the establishment of cities and towns… and the encouragement of tens and hundreds of thousands of residents to come live in Judea and Samaria. In this way, we will be able to create a clear and irreversible reality on the ground.”
With his ascension to Israel's cabinet, Smotrich has never been closer to realizing this annexation-apartheid program. It is moving apace, out of public view and without the approval of Israel’s National Security Council and defense agencies. Three apparently separate initiatives point to a process leading to a deliberate, strategic objective for the future of the West Bank.
One of these initiatives was manifest when Smotrich exercised his authority as finance minister and instructed government offices to prepare for settling another half-million Israelis in the West Bank. With his portfolio in the Defense Ministry, he prioritized controlling the Civil Administration and the legal advisor to the Defense Ministry that handles the West Bank.
This initiative has already yielded results. Nine outposts, illegal by Israeli and international law, have quickly received post-facto authorization; plans have been approved to build thousands of housing units across the West Bank; the Disengagement Law that secured the withdrawal of Israelis from Gaza and five West Bank settlements was partially repealed; despite U.S. protestations, the settlement of Homesh has effectively been reestablished; and vast new budgets, to the tune of billions of shekels, have been approved for upgrading settlement infrastructure.
Another initiative is encapsulated in the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial overhaul, which would endow the executive branch with unfettered power, including the authority needed to execute Smotrich's plan. After all, as he wrote in 2017, "New democratic and legal constructions might be required to ensure this situation."
A third aspect was reflected in Operation Shield and Arrow, Israel’s recent military campaign in Gaza, which was in line with a deliberate policy of strengthening Hamas and undermining the Palestinian Authority, vitiating what remains of the latter’s operational capacity. A clear line connects the effort to expand settlement deep inside the West Bank and the policy of eliminating the Palestinian Authority, thereby generating chaos that would require the IDF to reestablish control over the entire area, with all the bloodshed and other long-term consequences that would entail.
Taken together, these three initiatives lead to a common set of results. They will make a political solution with the Palestinians less likely, while compromising Israel’s security, economy and foreign relations in the region and beyond.
What underpins them all is a messianic belief that somehow, everything will work itself out. Smotrich’s Decisiveness Plan is a practical expression of his worldview, and the extremist, messianic vision that has embedded itself ever more deeply in recent decades. He and Itamar Ben-Gvir were able to secure the cabinet posts they demanded thanks to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fecklessness and willingness to mortgage Israeli security to his own political survival. The politicians backing the plan are remarkably arrogant in their complacency as they forge ahead with this suicidal policy.
Ben-Gvir was handed the Internal Security Ministry – which he expanded – providing him with a veritable Molotov cocktail he can toss at will, and Smotrich received the Finance Ministry and a portfolio in the Defense Ministry, powerful positions that enable him to promote his agenda.
The annexation plan itself has managed to elude public scrutiny. We act as if it were just another, mundane real estate deal. Iran’s nuclear program has, justifiably, been subject to widespread public discussion and detailed examination by the security establishment. For some reason, however, Israelis have turned a blind eye to the “nuclear” threat of accelerating efforts to reestablish Israeli control – and then to annex – territory on the West Bank.
According to Smotrich's plan, “West Bank Arabs” can respond in three possible ways. They can accept their status as Israel’s subjects, emigrate, or violently resist. In the latter case, the IDF will take aggressive action to suppress opposition and achieve decisive military control. Suffice to say that Smotrich’s analysis completely ignores the views of Israel’s senior military experts regarding the Palestinians.
In order to justify Smotrich's annexation plan, it is necessary to mislead the majority of the Israeli public into believing that annexation will bring military, economic and political benefits; that Western democracies will understand; that countries in our region will accept it; and that the whole thing will only deepen the moral, democratic values upon which Israeli society stands. This is a fraudulent act of deceit.
Deliberately and fully aware, Netanyahu is leading Israel into the abyss, all to avoid facing judgement for his actions. He, and he alone, bears overall responsibility for what is about to transpire. This is neither an ideological debate between left and right, nor a question of starry-eyed altruism. At stake is the Zionist vision that has guided us for the past 130 years and which is embodied in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. If the late Rabbis Ovadia Yosef and Elazar Shach were still at the helm of the Haredi community, one would have expected them to fiercely resist such a development. Unfortunately, today’s Haredi leadership has prioritized sectoral political and economic gains over collective responsibility.
The signs posted on West Bank settlement billboards earlier this month condemning the IDF Central Command were a clear warning to those who would stand in the way of annexation or attempt to enforce the law in opposition to the messianic, settler vision. It is a vision that justifies any price, be it military, social, political or economic. The distance between defamation of IDF officers who take a stand against lawlessness and their outright proscription as traitors is a short one indeed.
Annexation-apartheid will spell the end of Israel as a democratic society. In a word, it would be suicide. The Jewish People has already paid for similar mistakes in the form of 2000 years of exile. Today’s mistakes threaten Jewish sovereignty yet again, and agents of messianic chaos must not be allowed to bring it to an end. That is our fight today, and we are determined to persevere.
Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Yaakov (Mendy) Or, is a member of Commanders for Israel's Security and former Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories (COGAT), and a former Deputy Director General for Inspection of the Defense Establishment in the Office of the State Comptroller.
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