The U.S. news outlet Axios reported on Sunday that the Israeli government is seriously discussing the annexation of large parts of the occupied West Bank, in response to Western countries’ plans to recognise a Palestinian state.
According to three Israeli, American, and European sources cited by the outlet, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer informed their counterparts in several European states that Israel would annex sections of the West Bank if such recognitions move forward.
A European source told Axios that Dermer specifically conveyed to Anne-Claire Logendre, Middle East adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron, that Israel intends to annex Area C—which constitutes nearly 60% of the West Bank.
Sources added that this step will largely depend on the stance of U.S. President Donald Trump regarding annexation.
Axios also quoted U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee as saying that the Trump administration has not yet taken an official position on Israel’s annexation plans. Huckabee added that European moves towards recognising Palestine are already encouraging more Israelis to call for immediate annexation. He noted divisions within Netanyahu’s government itself regarding the scale of any annexation.
The Israeli security cabinet was scheduled to discuss the issue on Sunday, amid growing pressure from Netanyahu’s coalition partners to accelerate the annexation agenda.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has imposed punitive measures against the Palestinian Authority in an attempt to pressure Western states to back down from recognising Palestine. These measures included revoking visas for senior Palestinian officials due to attend the UN General Assembly in New York, including President Mahmoud Abbas.
France, Britain, and Australia have all declared they will recognise the State of Palestine during the upcoming UN meetings in September, joining more than 150 countries that already extend recognition.
Two Annexation Scenarios Under Discussion
In the same context, CNN quoted Israeli officials saying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is weighing options ranging from the full annexation of the West Bank to partial annexation of selected settlement blocs, alongside sanctions against the Palestinian Authority.
Earlier this month, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved the long-delayed E1 settlement plan, which seeks to isolate Jerusalem and physically sever the northern West Bank from the south. The plan includes the construction of 3,500 housing units in the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, a project postponed for years due to international opposition.
Imposing a New Settlement Reality
Commenting on these developments, Suleiman Basharat, a writer and expert on Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera Net that Israel’s moves are not merely a reaction to Western recognition of Palestine but rather the culmination of a decades-long project to impose an irreversible settlement reality.
Basharat explained that since the Oslo Accords, Israel has worked systematically to hollow out the agreement by refusing to implement its provisions—benefiting from the absence of binding mechanisms, especially from the U.S. and Western powers that once posed as its guarantors.
He added that Israel has now reached the stage where it seeks to formalise this reality through legislation and reclassification—such as redefining the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” and transferring administrative, legal, and even tourism infrastructure directly under Israeli control.
The core of this step, Basharat stressed, is to block the establishment of any viable Palestinian state. Annexation and settlement expansion permanently fracture Palestinian geography, rendering international recognition of Palestine little more than a symbolic gesture without tangible effect on the ground.
Israel, he continued, is also altering the demographic and geographic identity of the West Bank by redistributing populations in refugee camps such as Tulkarm and Jenin, while infrastructure projects carve the land into disconnected zones—most critically in Jerusalem, where the north and south of the West Bank are severed.
All this, Basharat argued, aims to entrench the concept of a “Jewish identity state” while erasing the Palestinian one. The current phase, he concluded, is a “phase of coronation”: Israel seeks to place the final legal, political, and settlement-based stamp on annexation, cementing the West Bank as part of its so-called “Jewish state” and extinguishing any realistic path to a two-state solution.
In July, the Israeli Knesset passed a draft law supporting the “imposition of sovereignty” over the occupied West Bank, where Israel has already implanted nearly 700,000 settlers.
