History does not always collapse with the sound of gunfire. Sometimes it dissolves through paperwork, zoning maps, cabinet votes and regulatory notices that barely make the evening news. The latest Israeli security cabinet decisions on the West Bank belong to that quieter, more consequential category. They do not declare annexation. They do something more durable: they normalise it.

By lifting long-standing restrictions on land purchases, dissolving permit systems, extending Israeli civil enforcement into Palestinian-administered areas, and assuming unilateral authority over key religious sites, Israel has not merely revised policy. It has effectively dismantled the territorial logic underpinning the Oslo framework that governed the West Bank for three decades.

The result is not an interim arrangement, nor a security measure, but a structural shift in sovereignty — administered incrementally, justified bureaucratically, and absorbed gradually by the international system. For the Board of Peace — of which Israel is also a member — this moment is a reminder that history doesn’t always shift through conflict; sometimes it changes quietly, through administrative decisions that reshape the future without ever announcing themselves.

Under the 1995 Oslo II Accords, the West Bank was divided into Areas A, B and C, a temporary geography intended to bridge occupation and statehood. Area A, roughly 18 per cent of the territory, was placed under full Palestinian civil and security control; Area B under Palestinian civil authority with joint security; Area C, comprising over 60 per cent of the land, under full Israeli control. That transitional architecture was never meant to last. Yet nearly thirty years on, it has now been functionally erased — not by negotiation, but by decree.

The result is not an interim arrangement, nor a security measure, but a structural shift in sovereignty — administered incrementally, justified bureaucratically, and absorbed gradually by the international system.

The numbers tell their own story. Around 500,000 Israeli settlers now live in more than 150 settlements across the West Bank, alongside approximately 200,000 Palestinians in Area C alone, according to humanitarian agencies. Roughly 60 per cent of Area C is designated state land or closed military zones, where Palestinian construction permits are rarely approved, leading to routine demolitions. These realities were already corrosive to any credible two-state horizon.

The new measures go further: they extend Israeli........

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