Illegal Israeli move

2026-02-19 - 00:13

TEL Aviv’s move to designate lands in the occupied West Bank as so-called “state land” is rightly considered as de facto annexation of the territory in fulfillment of its nefarious plans about greater Israel. This explains indignation among Palestinians and the global condemnation of the move by the civilized world including rights groups in Israel as well. A statement issued by 93 countries including the Muslim bloc of eight states has described the step as a grave escalation aimed at accelerating illegal settlement activity, land confiscation, entrenching Israeli control and applying unlawful Israeli sovereignty over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and undermining the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. The development comes at a time when the Board of Peace, chaired by President Donald Trump, was to hold its inaugural meeting to establish a US-led framework for postwar reconstruction in Gaza and oversee the second phase of the US-brokered 20-point peace plan, which includes the disarmament of Hamas and the deployment of an international security force. As Israel is continuing to kill defenceless Palestinians in Gaza on different pretexts despite a ceasefire agreement and its interests and designs for Gaza are actively being advanced by the US President, it is quite obvious that the Jewish state is implementing its agenda in the Middle-East in disregard to the international law, will of the world community and hundreds of resolutions of the United Nations. As for the West Bank, while Israel has increased the confiscation of Palestinian land through military orders, with the activity reaching record levels in 2025, the new move gives Israel a legal avenue that systematizes the dispossession of Palestinian land to further Israeli settlement expansion and cement the apartheid regime. It is because of this that even the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said the newly reinstated process of land registration amounts to a “full annexation” of Palestinian land. The group pointed out that the government is asking for papers that are dating back to the British mandate or to the Jordanian time 100 years ago, a requirement majority of Palestinians will not be able to meet resulting in registration of their land in the name of state (Israel). The apprehensions are not baseless as similar drama was enacted in occupied East Jerusalem in 2018 leading to expropriation of Palestinian land. Such moves make realization of two-state solution a distant dream and push Palestinians towards armed resistance, especially in the backdrop of impotency of the world body and collusion of Washington and Tel Aviv to deny legitimate rights to Palestinian people. There is also another dimension of the issue – strategists believe the new land registry laws and military pressure in the occupied West Bank are the final prelude to the ‘alternative land’ scenario – a notion that Jordan should become the Palestinian state.