Israeli war minister Israel Katz on Friday ordered the military to prepare a plan for transferring civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli police.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the decision followed criticism of the army’s handling of Israeli settlers who besieged a Palestinian home in the village of Qusra.

The war ministry said the police would establish a dedicated force to handle civilian matters.

However, Palestinian officials and political analysts described the structural shift as a dangerous acceleration of the Israeli regime’s efforts to annex Palestinian land and entrench an apartheid system.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera that the settlers are the “spearhead in the process of annexation and Judaization”.

He drew direct historical parallels to the mass displacement of Palestinians, stating, “They repeat what the Zionist terror gangs did in 1948, like the Haganah and the Stern Gang.”

Barghouti warned that placing security in the hands of national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and illegal Israeli settlements under finance minister Bezalel Smotrich amounts to “handing over the West Bank to the settlers”.

He stressed that this is an open war on the population, adding, “The actual ruler in the West Bank is the known fascist terrorist Smotrich.”

Analysts said replacing military occupation law with domestic civilian law fundamentally alters the legal reality of the territory.

Mohanad Mustafa, an academic and researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the decision legally erases the borders.

“The government is dealing with the West Bank not as an occupied territory,” Mustafa said.

He explained that by transferring power to a civilian police force, “this means that the government has annexed the West Bank”.

He said the move absolves the military of its obligations under international law while placing enforcement under Ben-Gvir.

Mustafa warned that Ben-Gvir, who previously oversaw the demolition of thousands of Arab homes in occupied Palestine, will now command the police to “support the settlers more and more and push them more and more towards deepening their repression and terrorism against the Palestinians”.

Palestinian leadership strongly condemned the mandate.

Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, described the move as a blatant violation of international agreements and an attempt to “impose Israeli law and sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, including East Al-Quds, and to entrench the illegal annexation of Palestinian land”.

The Palestinian resistance group Hamas also condemned the decision, calling the order a “dangerous step on the path to imposing de facto annexation” that provides “cover and more protection for the escalating attacks and crimes of the settlers”.

 

Settler militias

The Palestinian Authority has accused the Israeli government and its military of sponsoring settler violence.

Even Israeli members of parliament have accused the army of being complicit.

Analysts said relieving the military of its duties effectively deputises settler violence, turning settlers into an armed extension of the state.

Nihad Abu Ghosh, an expert in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that there is no contradiction between the army and the settlers.

He said the settlers have evolved into “fascist militia formations” that perform the state’s dirty work.

“These are fascist militia formations, and there are similar precedents in many countries that were ruled by fascism, whether in Spain, Italy, Germany, or even Chile,” Abu Ghosh said.

He added that these militias carry out roles that “require evading any discipline, rules, or laws” to achieve a “creeping, gradual annexation to make it a reality”.

 

Apartheid and displacement

The dual legal framework resulting from the shift has drawn sharp international and local criticism.

Shadi al-Shurafa, a researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the situation is a textbook definition of segregation.

“We are facing an application of an overt racist apartheid system in the West Bank,” al-Shurafa said, noting it involves one regime operating with two entirely different laws based on ethnicity.

He added that the ultimate goal of the current government is carrying out complete ethnic cleansing and trapping Palestinians in “isolated cantons and isolated Bantustans”.

Other experts said the move completely alters the international legal status of the territory and pushes the crisis into a more dangerous phase.

“The subject has bypassed the issue of annexation to a post-annexation phase and creating a reality where the Palestinian finds himself forced to think about migration,” said Adel Shadid, expert in Israeli affairs.

 

US role

Analysts also pointed to the role of the international community, particularly the United States, in enabling the shift.

Shadid dismissed recent US condemnations of settler violence as mere theatre to “mislead global public opinion”.

He argued that the underlying project has full US backing, noting that “all that is happening now is an American-Israeli plan and there is harmony between the two right-wing administrations in Washington and here in Israel”.

Andrew Whitley, a former United Nations official and director of the Balfour Project, stressed that the planned transfer is “completely illegal” and urged immediate global intervention.

He told Al Jazeera that the “Palestinian state is disappearing before our eyes”, demanding that the international community move beyond rhetoric.

“We have to do much more than just wring our hands and complain that governments are not doing anything about this,” Whitley said, calling for concrete sanctions to halt the rapid erasure of the Palestinian presence.