Overview
- Israel’s security cabinet approved lifting a decades-old ban on Jewish private land purchases in the occupied West Bank and ordered the land registry opened to facilitate transactions.
- Planning for religious and other sensitive sites in Hebron will shift to Israeli authorities, with expanded Israeli enforcement over environmental and archaeological rules in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority and a state committee revived to buy land.
- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the decisions as illegal de-facto annexation and called for immediate intervention by the United States and the UN Security Council.
- Hamas urged Palestinians to intensify confrontation, while the European Union and governments including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey condemned the measures as violating international law and undermining a two-state solution.
- The steps were announced days before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned meeting with President Donald Trump, with Israeli media reporting unclear U.S. coordination, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich saying the goal is to deepen Israeli roots and bury a Palestinian state.