Israel's finance minister now governs the West Bank. Critics see steps toward permanent control

Now they see steps toward permanent control? Yes, the first clues are starting to appear, it's not like a growing apartheid has been occurring for years or anything.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

“If Smotrich keeps this position for four years we will be at a point of no return,” said Ilan Paz, former head of Israel’s Civil Administration, a military body overseeing civilian affairs in the West Bank.

The coalition agreement created a new Israeli settler agency, led by Smotrich, within the Defense Ministry to manage Jewish and Palestinian construction in the 60% of the West Bank over which Israel has control.

“It’s a sort of revolution, transferring powers from the military, with its legal obligation to consider the well-being of occupied people, to those only committed to Israeli interests,” said human rights lawyer Michael Sfard.

Renovation fever ran high at the Asa’el playground as mothers gushed about their plans to swap ramshackle caravans and wheezing generators for concrete and Israel’s national electricity grid.

“Our government has finally figured out that withdrawing from land is a prize for terror,” said Rabbi Menachem Ben Shachar, a teacher at a newly built yeshiva seminary at Homesh, one of four outposts that Israel evacuated in 2005.

Last month, the tug-of-war between Smotrich stalwarts and security-minded military men burst into the open when Israeli authorities were filmed pumping cement into wells south of Hebron, permanently sealing Palestinian water sources in the heat of summer.

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